Posted by Robert Cummings on 08/14/05 07:05

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 23:51, Matthew Weier O'Phinney wrote:
> * Sebastian <sebastian@broadbandgaming.net> :
> > Jochem Maas wrote:
> > > if you haven't seen it yet and are interested in the future
> > > of php you might be interested in the _big_ thread on php-internals
> > > that starts with the message:
> > >
> > > http://www.manucorp.com/archives/internals/200508/msg00398.php
> > >
> > > IMHO every halfbaked php coder should read it ;-)
> > >
> > > to cut it short for those to busy, or what not, Rasmus offered his
> > > his vision of php6 (which seems will be the version that will first
> > > bring the awesome unicode [and date?] functionality to the masses
> > > - hey thats us! :-) ) and there seems to be pretty much unanimous
> > > agreement on his main points (lots of discussion on more issues/ideas
> > > other people have brung up in response)
> > >
> > > the future's bright, the future is green.
> >
> > why php6 and not php5? look how long it took to get to php4 (with php5
> > just starting to rolling out) and people are already talking about php6?
>
> My observation was that more people jumped to PHP4 from PHP3 than have
> so far from PHP4 to PHP5. And PHP5 has hardly just started to roll out;
> the official 5.0.0 release was over a year ago.
>
> > sure it is just a 'versioning' thing, but right now huge numbers of php
> > users aren't using php5 (including me) on production environments, let
> > alone start talking about php 6.
>
> And why aren't you using PHP5? Is there any specific reason? Is it
> because your service provider doesn't offer it? If so, ask them why --
> and report it here. As soon as PHP5 hit stable, I started using it, and
> I've never looked back. Performance is better, and there are many
> features -- exceptions, the new OOP model, autoload, iterators, etc. --
> that simply have no analogs in PHP4.
>
> > anyway, i think i will be with php4 for a long time to come.
>
> Please tell the list why -- what does PHP4 offer over PHP5 for you? I
> honestly want to know, and I'm sure there are others who would be
> interested to see why people are not making the switch.

While I've dabbled with PHP5 and made my framework compatible with it I
haven't bothered to make a wholehearted leap into it. The following
reasons basicly sum up why, and are probably common amongst those that
aren't leaping into PHP5.

- Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Many PHP
developers have spent years using PHP4 and know it inside and
out and have come to terms with all of it's deficiencies... as
few as those may be once you learn how to adapt to them.

- A multitude of code already exists that is known to work under
PHP4 but can be expected to have quirks when run under PHP5.

- Much of the code written in PHP4 works without the new features
of PHP5 and so there's no compelling reason to invest time and
resources for 0 ROI other than compatibility with PHP5.

- PHP5 had a large focus on bringing missing OOP features to PHP
that have little merit to those who write mostly procedural code.

- Accelerators for PHP5 are not particularly good at this time, so
unless you've got cash to shell out to Zend (which can be
expensive for the little guy) then why move from your trusty
PHP4 accelerators that already get the job done satisfactorily.

I'm sure there's more reasons I just haven't bothered to think long
enough about. These ones just came to the top of my head :) BTW I have
no problem with the fact Zend charges for their accelerator, they are a
business after all, I'm just arguing the case for those of limited
resources.

Cheers,
Rob.
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