PHP5 ... are we there yet?

PHP
1

Years ago, when PHP5 came out, I thought finally!

While far from perfect, still an extremely ugly “language” with a lot of shortcommings, at least PHP5 is an improvement over the mess that is php4.

So, I ported geniegate to php5, taking advantage of the features of php5 that made things a little cleaner (exceptions for example)

And… thud.

Everyone was using php4, I ended up re-writing it again back to php4, (I would have just rolled back, but I wanted to keep the view system I’d written in PHP5).

I’m not real wild about re-writing it in php5 only to have to go back tp php4 again, but I do want it to work with postgresql and the thought of working in php4 really makes me cringe.

It’s not really a 1/2 way project, if I go php5, I’m going all the way. :slight_smile:

So, I ask you…

Are we there yet?

2

There are a lot of servers ran by morons who got their system cobbled together years ago, fired or cheesed off the guy who set it up, and have no idea how to maintain the thing. They don’t patch or upgrade because they are scared of doing so themselves and too cheap to do it themselves.

Consequences of not doing so be damned.

3

I did that once, client agreed, “Sure, php5 it is” I spent about a week building his system, sent him the code.

Turns out he had php4, I ended up with nothing for all the trouble.

4

I refuse to work in PHP4. I explain to clients that it’s out of date, insecure and that PHP5 offers me as a developer more tools to work with meaning it will take less development time. Along with the fact that I have to write pretty much everything from scratch and cant use existing libraries further increasing
development time. Essentially I tell them it will be three times the development time (and therefor price) in PHP4 (which is generous to be honest), or they
can get a proper host and get PHP5.

It’s simply not worth my time writing code for PHP4. I’d rather lose the client than have to work with PHP4.

5

There are two approaches you can take:

  1. Those running my code have absolutely no responsibilities, and can expect it to work in PHP3 on a Texas Instruments calculator powered by a caveman turning a hand crank. (PHP4 support required)

  2. I’ll write good code, but there is some onus on you to provide a post-2005 server environment. (PHP4 support NOT required).

I think #2 is reasonable in most cases any most decent shared hosts have had PHP5 for years.

6

We have been there for a while now. Its time to get clients to update to PHP 5.
PHP 4 is no longer getting patches or security patches.