I wonder... not rage bait btw... but PHP was super easy to program. I wonder if things like this are harder to build today. Like, before you could setup a LAMP stack and program a wiki in the time it takes to begin to wrap your head around the current programming paradigms.

I don't think the languages changed; our minimum standards did. Standing up a bare-minimum user login in PHP for a homework assignment is easy. Now fix all the SQL injection, encrypt the passwords securely, lock down the database, make sure your cookies are always first-party, etc. There's a lot to hold in your head for secure web development in general.

It’s not just the code, but the collaboration to write the actual pages.

Regarding PHP, a small wiki or cms was always a starter project back in the day. For sure it’s a good way to wrap your head around a language and project

PHP can hosted in so many places for so cheap. It still has a place, like everything

Today you can use LLM to get most of that. Whether anyone is willing to commit to the success of a LLM-driven project and a different problem.

No.

Wikipedia became popular despite its programming. Anyone who has ever tried to edit a Wiki page knows its editor is absolute garbage, for example. Want to create your own basic DIY wiki in 2026? Just set up a GitHub Pages which auto-accepts pull requests, you'll be up and running in less than 30 minutes.

Besides, nobody is forcing to to use the current programming paradigms. A classic LAMP stack will still work.

Oops, guess it was rage bait. (not OOP btw). I just figured the economist article was about programming. Don't have JS on this computer, so I couldn't read it.

1) I doubt The Economist is suggesting that technical complexity is the reason they think that something like Wikipedia won't happen again.

2) You still have LAMP, even if the A is now often Nginx and the M Postgres. That stack is at least as easy as back in the day (signed someone who in my teens loved PHP so much that I made CLI utilities and IRC bots with it, auch). But that's besides the point, because several programming languages and web frameworks now come with their own built-in web-server for development, so you don't even need a stack to get started! This part is easier today.

A LAMP stack is still possible. Some lean toward alternative "frugal" stacks, like https://learnbchs.org/

It’s not like choice is not there.