PHP4 is the new IE6. Developers- Let go!
By the end of this year the PHP team will discontinue PHP4. Some developers are a little stressed over this. Whether they put off upgrading until now, or never wanted to deal with the “new fangled technology”, we’ll never know. I’d be excited to upgrade. A new version?! Sweet! But apparently not.
2004. The year PHP5 was released. Exactly 5 days ago, PHP5 was released three years ago.
Three years is a long time. I personally have never used just PHP4, and even my first web host had PHP5. They were unreliable and sort of went under, but with Ruby on Rails and PHP5, they seemed pretty cutting edge.
So what’s the hold up? If you’ve written so much PHP4 code that it would take too long to rewrite to adhere to PHP5, then you started digging yourself a whole a long time ago. It’s like WordPress, for example. There’s a WordPress version (2.0.6 or something) that allows you to use the “Read more” feature and still offer full feeds. Is holding out for one feature really worth it?
The only thing putting off your upgrade has done are negative things. First, you’ve made it worse for yourself by burying yourself in PHP4 code, which might have backwards compatibility issues. I agree, the BC issues of PHP4/5 can be troublesome, and should have been worked around somehow, but that’s life.
Next, all the slowpoke upgraders slow the development. PHP4 is the new IE6. Some users just can’t let go and soon they’ll be screwed. Not by PHP, but by themselves.
Moral of the story, upgrade you software, web apps, languages, and everything else.
And, you, IE6 users! Yes, all 7% of you. Upgrade to IE7 today.
Leave a comment
Ronald Huereca
July 18th, 2007 at 9:11 PM
Connor,
This seems to be one of those Catch 22 situations. I never wrote in PHP 5 because none of the hosts had it installed. Now that hosts are starting to have it installed, a lot of the applications are still in PHP 4.
It’d be interested to know how many hosts don’t have PHP 5 running. If it’s a significant percentage, then I can understand the reluctance to move on to PHP 5.
Connor Wilson
July 18th, 2007 at 9:34 PM
That’s a good point, Ron, and it’s surprising that PHP5 isn’t 100% supported, I think. You can blame it on the people all you want (like I did ;)) but when it comes down to it, if the host hasn’t upgraded, then how can the developers?
Another thing that will be interesting is the true firmness of this. PHP4 updates will end at the beginning of 2008. Oh really? All it takes is one exploit to get whiners going, and then they might hang on a little white longer.
But, we’ll see, of course.
Connor Wilson
July 19th, 2007 at 11:22 AM
Haha, I just checked my PHP version and I was running PHP4. Strange, because everything else is on PHP5. It’s getting an upgrade in a couple minutes, hopefully it goes well
L3ggy
July 20th, 2007 at 12:31 PM
My host still has 4
i keep saying upgrade it or have the choice.
Pete Shawl
October 15th, 2008 at 3:51 AM
FastHosts just recently upgraded to PHP 5 on their shared servers - yes, it’s now October 2008!
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