19 years ago

19 years ago on this day I released the first ever version of a software project I decided to name curl. Just a little hobby you know. Nothing fancy.

19 years ago that was a few hundred lines of code. Today we’re at around 150.000 lines.

19 years ago that was mostly my thing and I sent it out hoping that *someone* would like it and find good use. Today virtually every modern internet-connected device in the world run my code. Every car, every TV, every mobile phone.

19 years ago was a different age not only to me as I had no kids nor house back then, but the entire Internet and world has changed significantly since.

19 years ago we’d had a handful of persons sending back bug reports and a few patches. Today we have over 1500 persons having helped out and we’re adding people to that list at a rapid pace.

19 years ago I would not have imagined that someone can actually stick around in a project like this for this long time and still find it so amazingly fun and interesting still.

19 years ago I hadn’t exactly established my “daily routine” of spare time development already but I was close and for the larger part of this period I have spent a few hours every day. All days really. Working on curl and related stuff. 19 years of a few hours every day equals a whole lot of time

I took us 19 years minus two days to have our first ever physical curl meeting, or conference if you will.

20 thoughts on “19 years ago”

  1. Thank you very much for this awesome library. I use this every day 😉

  2. So appreciate for your great job. I use curl in my daily life, this is my favorite Http/Https tool.

  3. A bit late to the party, but many thanks for all the work you’ve put into curl! I actually had no idea it’s been around for 19 years, amazing! I guess next year there will be a grand celebration 🙂

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