Peter Moulding
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Peter Moulding is best known on the Web for his articles on PHP.
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[edit] Early career
As a young child, Peter rebuilt a popular model mechanical alarm clock. The remanufactured clock used fewer parts but kept measurably better time. While still in his early teens, he built unique electronic devices using the digital chips that preceded microcomputers. When Intel released the first single chip microcomputer, Peter began building personal computers. Digital Research released the CP/M operating system which struck him as having primitive performance, so he developed a virtual computing layer embedded in hardware to provide additional performance while running a standard operating system. The technique was then independently developed for mainframes and later for PCs. Peter made an attempt to licence the new QDOS operating system from Seattle Computer Products. While he was arranging a flight to Seattle, he learned that Seattle Computer Products had sold QDOS to an almost unknown Seattle local named Bill Gates.
In Australia, Peter pioneered cost effective computing among IBM mainframe users. On one project, at a time when computing cost thousands of dollars per hour, he reduced an eight-hour process to less than one hour by developing new computing practices and techniques. After establishing a name for cutting mainframe running costs, he began replacing million dollar mainframes with microcomputers.
[edit] PHP
IBM entered the personal computing market in 1981 and pushed all previous hardware approaches off the market. Peter focused on software and human interface improvements, foreshadowing the emphasis on documents taken by Wang Laboratories and later by Apple Computer.
The release of the World Wide Web helped Peter bring to small businesses the cost savings he previously produced on large corporate projects. In 1994, Rasmus Lerdorf invented PHP. PHP version 3 was so easy to use and teach that Peter dropped the use of his own Web language and promoted PHP. Peter taught non-programming Web developers to use PHP and databases so they can build dynamic Web sites. PostgreSQL and MySQL competed for the open source database market. Peter’s first book on PHP reached number one in the Web programming category and expanded the market for both PHP and MySQL. Luke Welling and Laura Thomson furthered the use of MySQL with PHP when they released their excellent book PHP and MySQL Web Development. In 2004, MySQL released enhancements that finally made MySQL a replacement for commercial databases including Oracle. Peter is now mentoring CEOs, CFOs, boards of directors, and Web developers to help them use the latest technology to reduce costs.
