Re: Why PHP4?

Quoting Hélio Rocha <hjrocha@gmail.com>:

Sorry to disagree, But I think that with PHP4 a lot of people start thinking that they could be programmers (maybe they can, developers it's another story). When php5 came they didn't know how do deal with the deprecated methods and worst, some hosters didn't know how to virtualize a f1ck1n' server with Apache+PHP5. A lot of mistakes were made when php5 came out but how can a language grow up when they DEPRECATE the syntax? we're not talking about removing the last ';'...

O come on. All people have had enough time to get used to it. Between the time PHP5 first came out and when it started to gain attention mainstream wise. Is a gap of 5 years. I think 5 years is enough to get used to new / deprecated features. I still think PHP is moving the right way. When i do an upgrade i first check change logs. You can always expect things to change. It's a dynamic world we live in :)

Maybe I'm in a "GET LOST PHP" phase but I think that someone is killing it, and the ones who are stuck in 4 are not helping. When U write code, U must not be worried 'bout the next upgrade of your server! Best regards! On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 3:31 AM, VamVan <vamseevan@gmail.com> wrote:

Its because PHP got really famous with version 4.0 and many people actually converted their CGI or other websites in to PHP 4 websites because it was easy and cheap. But 5.0 brought too many changes like serious OOPS and register global concepts for security, which is useful but made transition difficult. I feel thats why PHP 4 is still supported. Its not only the language that has changed, but also people had to upgrade their skill set and there was some learning curve involved. Unfortunately everyone fell in the trap of register globals which was not dealt until php 4.3.1 as a security concept. Pear and Pecl were there but everyone was pretty much writing all the code (reinventing the wheel) from scratch. This brings in huge code base to change. I liked PHP because intitially it was a procedural langauge and it resembled C. But now with OOPS you can build powerful websites which is good. There are many other cases but I feel strongly this is what makes them still support PHP 4. Thanks

Personally i use PHP5 when ever i can. But at work we are stuck with some small legacy applications . And some major applications written on top of PHP4. For which is no time to do the research let alone the time to rebuild them. I think there are a few reasons why people still use PHP4. 1. People learned PHP4 as a hobby. So upgrading knowledge goes much slower. Then when you have to stay on top work wise. (which will create a chicken egg situation with point 2) 2. Hosting providers have no clue how to configure their environment. Or are stuck with customers running PHP4 applications. 3. No time to research and rebuild existing applications. (which will create a chicken egg situation with point 2)