Science Quote by Rasmus Lerdorf

That deadpan bewilderment is doing more work than it first appears to. Coming from Rasmus Lerdorf - the pragmatic mind behind PHP - the line reads like a small act of heresy in a culture that treats coding as identity, vocation, even moral virtue. The punch is in the feigned naivete: he’s not attacking programming’s usefulness, he’s puncturing the romance around it.

The intent feels diagnostic. Lerdorf is implicitly separating two tribes: people who enjoy programming as an end in itself, and people who tolerate programming as a means to ship something real. His career sits squarely in the second camp. PHP wasn’t born out of aesthetic purity; it was born out of “make the web work”, fast, messy, and widely. The quote’s subtext is an argument against fetishizing elegance over outcomes, a reminder that software is supposed to disappear into the background of human needs.

There’s also a subtle jab at status. “Actually like” frames enjoyment as suspicious, almost performative - a hobby elevated into a priesthood. In a tech industry that rewards obsessive passion (and uses it to justify long hours and brittle gatekeeping), saying “I don’t understand” becomes a refusal to play along. It’s a scientist’s skepticism applied to culture: if you claim you love the tool, are you sure you’re not avoiding the harder work of defining the problem?

The offhand tone matters. It’s not manifesto; it’s shrug. That shrug is the critique.