PHP5 - Slow on the uptake?
As a developer I always have in the back of my mind the importance of new technologies, and I am constantly thinking – “what should I learn next?” There is no doubt that web technologies move quickly - that’s a given - but after its initial release in 2004, why is PHP5 only just starting to take off? Well, ever since the release of our new PHP5 hosting platform I’ve been doing my research.
In terms of performance, although debated, PHP5 comes out on top by up to 20%, so that can’t be the reason.
How about the upgrade then, does it break everything? Well having, just done the upgrade with a large site - including its Expression Engine CMS - I can say that nothing broke (that I have found yet anyway!) and PHP/Zend pride themselves on the backwards compatibility of PHP5.
So what about the new functionality that PHP5 offers? Well I’m biased, coming from a Java background I love OO, and there is no doubt that MySQL functionality is some of the most useful functions in web development. Expanding and improving these can only be a good thing.
So I still don’t get why PHP5 has taken so long! Personally I believe that PHP5 has been a victim of PHP4’s success. With PHP4 on tens of millions of servers around the world, short of a Microsoft style forced upgrade, what can the PHP Group do? Enter GoPHP5.org, the polite open source way of persuading people to upgrade. Now that GoPHP5 have persuaded almost all the large PHP projects to be PHP5 compatible (including CMS projects like Expression Engine and Wordpress, and tools such as PHPMyAdmin) we no longer have a reason to stick to PHP4. The final push came with the release of exciting new projects like Magento only available on a PHP5 platform. That was it, over the edge we went and into the future of PHP.
There is no doubt that PHP5 has been a slow starter, but the success of previous technologies shouldn’t stop us moving on to new ones. Otherwise, how would we ever know whether the next thing is better or not? With the vast majority of PHP projects now PHP5 compatible, it’s time to move on and ultimately keep up.
Comments (4 comments)
I’ve come up against huge amounts of inertia, particularly at one of my main web hosts ( http://www.openhosting.com ). They’re concerned that if they roll out PHP5, users will complain that their sites break, but in reality most of their users are ASP or .NET coders, and if they emailed everyone a month in advance I’m sure there would be no problems. I really think that most of the blame lies with hosting companies, especially ones selling low-cost multi-domain and reseller accounts.
Andy Towler / April 11th, 2008, 10:46 am
I’m a big fan of CodeIgniter framework and look forward to cranking out PHP5 code using it. And with PHP6 around the corner, I think it’s a KILLER technology that’s FREE as air.
MaxTheITpro / May 9th, 2008, 1:46 pm
[…] PHP5 - Slow on the uptake? […]
Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Some links for light reading (13/5/08) / May 13th, 2008, 12:17 pm
PHP5 has been about for quite a while now and most hosts have switched over. If you host hasn’t then you should recommend they should. We’ve migrated many sites with little or no trouble. PHP5 and codeignitor rock. Fast and free
PHP5 Hosting Fan / June 2nd, 2008, 8:30 pm
What do you think?