The Bob Bloom Show

#26 - Low Level PHP
June 01, 2025
17:06
There is renewed interest in PHP's low level roots.

The low-level root of PHP is the language it is written in: C. 

This renewed interest includes:
•  compiling PHP feature code with the PHP interpreter, into one executable binary
• speeding up code execution by way of the C language's process forks. 

This all has direct relevance to PHP serverless. Which has heightened my desire to understand C.

FrankenPHP is now under the auspices of the PHP Foundation. This has further heightened my desire to understand the low level underpinings of PHP. 

In this episode, I
•  look at this mini-trend
•  outline what it means to be a low level programming language
•  take a quick look at random access memory

All this as a prelude to a special mid-month episode going over low level concepts in C in a classic textbook.
Links:
Attributions
Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, Op.21:

Beethoven's Symphony No.9, Op.125:

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Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
Luke Galea
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Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
(Luke Galea's website)
Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
Tolga Ercan
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Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
(Tolga Ercan's website)