NYCPHP Meetup

[Andrew Yochum]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 09:22:01PM -0600, Anthony Papillion wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I've been using PHP 4 and am very comfortable with it. I've developed
> several major products in 4 and they work very well and are stable.
> Lately, I've had a few clients ask me about PHP 5 and if they should
> migrate over to it because it's the latest and greatest. I've always
> told them no because of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule.
> 
> But lately, I've been wondering about switching myself.
> 
> Is it advantageous for me, as a web developer, to begin switching my
> projects over to PHP 5 and OOP even if the old way is working fine?
> I'm not seeing too many jobs that require 5 knowledge and I notice
> that a mass migration of hosting providers to PHP 5 has yet to happen.
> 
> What does everyone think? Is learning and switching over to 5 now
> worthwhile or should I wait until it's been more fully adopted by the
> community?

One suggestion I have is to develop your applications to work on both 4
& 5 now.  That will make your life easier when the masses (such as your
web host, colleagues, and developers of 3rd party software/libs you use)
migrate to PHP 5, while allowing you to run them now on servers that
currently run PHP 4.  You don't need to learn all the new features -
learn them as you need/want them.  Focus on getting your apps working on
both gets you started.  Adam Trachtenberg's Upgrading to PHP 5 is a
great book on this subject.

I don't know that if has been discussed publicly, but PHP 4 may be
sunsetted sometime in the next couple of years.  This may force the mass
migration at some point.  PHP 4 is only receving bug and security fixes
as it is now.  No new major releases are planned.  It may only a matter
of time.  However, at the same time, the PHP community is huge, and the
PHP 4 install base is also huge.  It has had a longer life than PHP 3
did... whose last release was in Oct 2000, just 5 months after PHP 4 was
first released in May 2000.

HTH,
Andrew
-- 
Andrew Yochum
Plexpod
andrew at plexpod.com
718-360-0879