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.