Comments on: Does PHP 5 Hurt PHP?

By: Edward W

Edward W — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:05:18 +0000

I agree with the assertions that many sites need very little to no recoding in order to move to PHP5. I was able to run PHP5 3 years ago without a single change in any code.

What is never taken into account is the memory footprint of PHP4 vs PHP5. PHP5 hogs up to double the RAM per thread as compared to ‘old and outdated’ PHP4.

This may have changed in recent versions but, in my experience, an upgrade to PHP5 on a high traffic (80M page views/month) site brought my servers to their knees due to performance and RAM waste issues. I was forced to revert to PHP4 or purchase upgraded/more servers.. in order to run the exact same code!

How is this an upgrade?

As for register_globals being removed at some point. This is the result of the stupid many causing a change for all, whether wanted or not. With correctly coded scripts, register_globals is not a security issue at all. I use them all the time and invite you to try to inject code on any of my sites. Correctly coding cannot be fixed by banning the use of possibly insecure features.. EVER.

I, for one, will wait until the last minute to move to PHP5. Maybe by then it will be optimized enough to compete with it’s older brother.

By: cybrsrfr

cybrsrfr — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:57:03 +0000

To learn the changes between PHP4 and PHP5 is less than a couple of hours of effort. To make the changes necessary for a project to work on PHP5 are rather minor and if it was developed with known best practices it will require no changes at all. So what is the big deal of moving on to PHP5?

Moving a project to a new language will require a 100% rewrite vs 0-5% changes from PHP4 to PHP5.

The PHP programming language must move on before it and its developers become obsolete.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:46:52 +0000

The decision to not release Security Fixes for PHP4 is not mine to make.

Since the decision has been made, I can pass judgement on the decision itself. My actions do not come into play here.

PHP4 and PHP5 and PHP6… security fixes will be an issue no matter what you choose.

I think it would be best to go with a different language if security is your primary concern. There is no reason to stop security fixes for PHP4, but since they will stop, now is the perfect time to ‘move on’.

Just my 2 cents. Once bitten, twice shy.

By: cybrsrfr

cybrsrfr — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:40:03 +0000

Since PHP4 will no longer receive security fixes by the end of this year (2007) to wait for PHP6 or PHP7 will be a security risk.

To skip PHP5 and wait for 6 or 7 is also a great way of allowing your PHP development skills to become obsolete while you are waiting for the next version.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:18:59 +0000

Just wait until PHP6 or PHP7, that’s my recommendation.

By: banta

banta — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:17:20 +0000

When an user asked a php cms ( geeklog ) to develope a roadmap for php5 they [ Dirk - a core developer ] replied
“And “no roadmap to go to PHP5″? Geeklog runs just fine on PHP 5 - no need for any roadmap …”
http://www.geeklog.net/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=6&showtopic=78913&show=20&page=2

If core developers are reluctant I wonder where it hurts them !

By: mark

mark — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 22:18:39 +0000

Does PHP 5 hurt PHP? Actually it is exactly the opposite… PHP4 is old and is harming PHP. Support for PHP4 should have been dropped a long time ago. Why because technologies evolve and if PHP doesn’t evolve with it then it will eventually fizzle and die.

The migration from PHP4 to PHP5 is quite easy and I don’t see what people complain about. PHP5 does have compelling features like PDO, OO speed improvements, and more.

By: Larry Garfield

Larry Garfield — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:49:23 +0000

Er, why? No version of PHP provides strong typing. I doubt one ever will. If your problem with PHP 5 is that it doesn’t provide strong typing, then you really shouldn’t be using PHP in the first place and the version is irrelevant.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:43:26 +0000

If that’s the case I would support PHP4 until the sun explodes.

When 8-2008 rolls around, the love for PHP4 stops.

That’s a shame.

By: Larry Garfield

Larry Garfield — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:03:03 +0000

Yes, the comments in the php.net online manual are pruned periodically. They’re not for support questions, but for user-embellishment and tips. For support questions, try the php-general mailing list. It’s quite active and usually quite helpful.

I think you’re missing the point, though. In 99% of cases, you don’t cast a type of a variable when you create it (unless you’re instantiating an object), because PHP doesn’t care. It’s a weakly typed language, by design.

$an_integer = 1;
$a_string = “1″;

In 99% of cases, both will do what you want. If you really really have to cast it, you do it the same way as in C:

$a_string = (string)$an_integer;

From the sound of it, you’re saying you want PHP to tell you how to do strict typing. If you really want strict typing, you should not be using PHP in the first place. That has nothing to do with sloppy code; that’s the way the language is designed to work.

The “companies make Java and .NET so they must be better” logic also falls flat on its face. The open source movement if nothing else has blown that fallacy out of the water completely.

PHP 4 is “from the year 2000″. PHP 5 is a “today’s language”. That’s the whole point of pushing PHP 5 adoption!