Matt Mullenweg: "I am the most unlucky poker player"
Matt Mullenweg is the man who invented Wordpress . "Professional bloggers" and WP-developers, this name is perfectly familiar.
Matt kindly agreed to answer questions habrasoobschestva . In an interview, he spoke about himself, about the history of Wordpress, and gave advice to novice programmers.
Where are you currently working?
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I am the president of Automattic , a company I founded about a year and a half ago. As a founder, I have to be torn between some kind of “everyday” problems — daily concerns and the company's strategy — developing plans, determining what the company will be in 6 months, in 3 years, etc.
A couple of years ago you said: “Do what you love, what you cannot do, and money will appear.” Do you still love Wordpress? If it's not a secret, are you satisfied with the income that he brings and related projects?
Definitely, I still love Wordpress - and the community that has evolved around it. And Automattic works fine: the company is developing steadily.
Wordpress was your breakthrough. What do you think, in what direction should young programmers work now to make such a breakthrough?
I think: the more people agree that a certain field is occupied and that a certain class of products is brought to perfection, the greater the chances for the emergence of certain new ideas and innovations. Being a pioneer in some field is a great achievement, because you are not bound by any stereotypes, other people's opinions about how and what should work.
If I started now, I would join the open source project. I just can’t imagine how it is possible in another way to gain invaluable experience and knowledge from professionals who work with you in one project.
Have you received offers from large corporations?
You know, it was the case. And I worked at CNET for a year, but now I work in an excellent startup where there is freedom for creativity, so I don’t know if I want to return to the “corporate world”.
Do you remember the very first line of code written by you?
No, I definitely don’t remember, but there must have been at least three mistakes.
What are your favorite blogs?
Recently I enjoyed reading www.webworkerdaily.com , www.simonwillison.net and www.horsepigcow.com . In general, the set of my "favorite" blogs varies throughout the day - depending on the mood. And I subscribed to 345 blogs that I read regularly.
A few technical questions about wordpress. First of all, when will native OpenID support appear in the engine? How do you even rate OpenID?
I think OpenID has the potential to become a very cool thing. Wordpress already has its support through plugins, Wordpress MU will also support it soon - with the help of the plugin we developed. So far, I doubt the need for his native support: just not many people use it.
There is an opinion that Wordpress was created under the influence of Drupal. It was a long time ago, and now Wordpress has become more popular. If you were a newbie, which engine would you choose?
No doubt wordpress. I don’t even remember that I was playing with Drupal when I was working on WP. I was more impressed by Textpattern, Movable Type, vBulletin, PostNuke, OS Commerce and all that. Naturally, I learned from them how NOT to do.
Wordpress has been developed for a long time, but it still does not work correctly with UTF. Everything is solved by adding $ this-> query ("SET NAMES utf8"); in line 66 of the wp-db.php file. What is this - a difference of opinion between users and developers, or are there other reasons?
Not sure, but it seems that this is all due to compatibility issues with older versions of MySQL. Generally, if it really interests you, look at trac.wordpress.org to see if there is a flaw there - and write your opinion.
And finally: Still feel unlucky in cards?
Yes! I am the most unlucky poker player.
Matt kindly agreed to answer questions habrasoobschestva . In an interview, he spoke about himself, about the history of Wordpress, and gave advice to novice programmers.
Where are you currently working?
')
I am the president of Automattic , a company I founded about a year and a half ago. As a founder, I have to be torn between some kind of “everyday” problems — daily concerns and the company's strategy — developing plans, determining what the company will be in 6 months, in 3 years, etc.
A couple of years ago you said: “Do what you love, what you cannot do, and money will appear.” Do you still love Wordpress? If it's not a secret, are you satisfied with the income that he brings and related projects?
Definitely, I still love Wordpress - and the community that has evolved around it. And Automattic works fine: the company is developing steadily.
Wordpress was your breakthrough. What do you think, in what direction should young programmers work now to make such a breakthrough?
I think: the more people agree that a certain field is occupied and that a certain class of products is brought to perfection, the greater the chances for the emergence of certain new ideas and innovations. Being a pioneer in some field is a great achievement, because you are not bound by any stereotypes, other people's opinions about how and what should work.
If I started now, I would join the open source project. I just can’t imagine how it is possible in another way to gain invaluable experience and knowledge from professionals who work with you in one project.
Have you received offers from large corporations?
You know, it was the case. And I worked at CNET for a year, but now I work in an excellent startup where there is freedom for creativity, so I don’t know if I want to return to the “corporate world”.
Do you remember the very first line of code written by you?
No, I definitely don’t remember, but there must have been at least three mistakes.
What are your favorite blogs?
Recently I enjoyed reading www.webworkerdaily.com , www.simonwillison.net and www.horsepigcow.com . In general, the set of my "favorite" blogs varies throughout the day - depending on the mood. And I subscribed to 345 blogs that I read regularly.
A few technical questions about wordpress. First of all, when will native OpenID support appear in the engine? How do you even rate OpenID?
I think OpenID has the potential to become a very cool thing. Wordpress already has its support through plugins, Wordpress MU will also support it soon - with the help of the plugin we developed. So far, I doubt the need for his native support: just not many people use it.
There is an opinion that Wordpress was created under the influence of Drupal. It was a long time ago, and now Wordpress has become more popular. If you were a newbie, which engine would you choose?
No doubt wordpress. I don’t even remember that I was playing with Drupal when I was working on WP. I was more impressed by Textpattern, Movable Type, vBulletin, PostNuke, OS Commerce and all that. Naturally, I learned from them how NOT to do.
Wordpress has been developed for a long time, but it still does not work correctly with UTF. Everything is solved by adding $ this-> query ("SET NAMES utf8"); in line 66 of the wp-db.php file. What is this - a difference of opinion between users and developers, or are there other reasons?
Not sure, but it seems that this is all due to compatibility issues with older versions of MySQL. Generally, if it really interests you, look at trac.wordpress.org to see if there is a flaw there - and write your opinion.
And finally: Still feel unlucky in cards?
Yes! I am the most unlucky poker player.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/5488/
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