Derick Rethans wrote:
But who says your code should run on the new version? You don't *have*
to upgrade per se. It merely allows newly developed projects to run on a
cleaner version of PHP, which would undoubtfully also be faster (because
we wouldn't have any BC ballast).
If I have a newly developed application then I can just as well go for
something like RoR or Python or Java if I want something new and crispy
with all the cool new features.
I don't want that, I want something that can be used by almost anyone
with a webserver. I don't care (that much) for the new and cool things.
Sure it's very annoying that it's close to impossible to use (for
instance) UTF8 in PHP but I'd rather be able to run my software just
about anywhere with some restrictions in the language than being able to
use all the new and cool stuff on just a few servers out there or with
just a few clients. Skipping version 5 is just not an option for a LOT
of people out there. Especially all the OS projects (phpBB, phpMyAdmin,
Mambo, Gallery, Wordpress, etc, etc, etc) out there. They _have_ to
support whatever their users are using. If you're just telling the users
"sorry, PHP5 is not supported, we're waiting a year or 2 for version 6
because it has more bling-bling" then you can just as well stop with
your project because you're going to lose your entire community.
Are you sure it's because it breaks BC? We don't know why people don't
migrate.
Of course it's not just because of BC breakage but a lack of BC is
certainly not going to increase the percentage of PHP5 servers out
there. Besides BC is the fact that PHP5 is still relatively new, too
many small issues keep popping up and hosting providers are just really
conservative (and rightfully so). Just take a look at how long it took
before php3 was phased out.
And for us, we didn't migra>te because *we* want to start with a
new clean code base too, and not something hackish that just makes it
work with PHP 5.
That's really cool for you but for 95% of the people out there this is
just not an option :\
Yes, but it will also result in PHP being less and less competitive
because we have to maintain all the old (broken) behavior (and make sure
we never change anyting there).
That's just one side of it. If PHP isn't a stable platform then it's
also not going to be competitive. Being able to use your 'legacy' code
is pretty important for most people out there. It's certainly more
important (for the average end-user that wants a gallery or runs an
e-commerce site) than really new and cool OOP features. They (call them
the customer) don't care about that, they just want it to work and they
really can't be bothered by OOP or UTF8 as long as it works as expected.
Anyway. All I want to say is that you should IMO be careful with your
current user base. Trying to get them to use better/stricter/cleaner
coding practices is good as long as you're not just breaking 'bad' code.
Giving warnings (in E_STRICT) is good, it gives people time to adapt.
Just realize that people need a lot (really a lot) of time to adapt.
The main advantage that PHP has over other (better?) languages is that
it has a HUGE userbase, all the other web languages are dwarfed by the
size of PHP. This also means that there is a huge (really huge) amount
of 'old' code out there that people are using, you can't just discount
that. Losing this huge momentum can be rather fatal IMO.
But this is kind of straying from the original subject. In the end it's
all about where the benevolent dictators want the project to go. Do they
want a language that has the newest and coolest that programming has to
offer or do they want to provide a stable programming platform that has
inherited some flaws from the initial design? I don't know what they
want, I do know what I prefer :)
Bart
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