Science Quote by Rasmus Lerdorf

Standards are supposed to be civilization in checklist form; Lerdorf’s line needles the fantasy that the tech world actually lives that way. The sting is in the conditional: “When the world becomes standard...” It’s a dare dressed up as resignation, implying that the demand for standards often functions less as engineering discipline and more as a rhetorical weapon used to stall, shame, or control. If the ecosystem is inherently messy - vendors competing, browsers diverging, protocols half-implemented, real users doing real chaos - then “care about standards” can become an alibi for not shipping.

The subtext is pragmatic, almost punk: usefulness beats purity. It’s also a quiet jab at the people who invoke standards as if they’re neutral, when they’re often political artifacts: negotiated compromises, influenced by corporate interests, and outdated the moment they’re ratified. Lerdorf’s background in web-era programming (and his association with PHP’s famously “works in practice” culture) matters here. The web grew explosively precisely because it tolerated imperfection, embraced backwards compatibility, and rewarded developers who made things function across nonstandard reality.

There’s irony, too: the quote doesn’t reject standards outright; it rejects sanctimony. It’s a reminder that insisting on ideal rules in a non-ideal world can be its own kind of irresponsibility. In Lerdorf’s framing, standards are valuable only once they’re lived, not merely preached.