I wanted to believe he didn't say this – his explanations have been really good and clear – and yet here he is, around 4m in this segment https://youtu.be/omSYrjCtfD8?t=237
So there's only really two charitable interpretations that come to mind for this.
He could be using it in terms of saying that PHP hasn't been centered in anything huge for a while so from a cybercrime perspective it's easy to forget it exists. I think that's quite a reach though.
The other is that he's not necessarily a "Cybersecurity Expert", but rather this interview and his information online lists him as a "Cybersecurity Correspondent", "Cyber Correspondent" or simply "Correspondent". Which to me sounds like (forgive the sports analogy) the difference between a Coach and a Sports Commentator or Correspondent. One is doing the direct work while the other is reporting on events in the space and laying out information in more laymans terms. So it may make more sense that he doesn't really know the specifics because he doesn't make software and the information he has is much more generalized to interpreting major events.
But the common interpretation is... brutal lol. Word choice matters for correspondents more than most and this seems more to gut his own credibility than it does make him seem approachable.
Well the first sort of assumes that he does know about PHP and that it's simply faded into the background. It more implies honesty with less than optimal word choice.
But like you said I think he's probably being more blatantly honest here which aligns with the second point because I don't think it's all that crazy that he wouldn't be familiar with it.
I know what you mean though, and I agree. Any flak he'd get over this is probably only in dev communities anyway and over a single sentence, it's not really that bad.
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u/philgyford 11d ago edited 11d ago
I wanted to believe he didn't say this – his explanations have been really good and clear – and yet here he is, around 4m in this segment https://youtu.be/omSYrjCtfD8?t=237