[wp-hackers] PHP 5 any time soon?

[Davit Barbakadze]

I tried to use namespaces recently just to find out that my hosting
server has not upgraded to PHP 5.3.0 yet. And I got at least two users
with PHP4 on their servers, with one of them having no potential way
to upgrade. So basically it's an infinite loop, hosting servers look
at users and while they do not claim an upgrade do not usually do it,
then WordPress looks at PHP versions used on servers sees that they
are still old and doesn't drop support for them... It can last for
years!

The newer is always better, probably there's no doubt about it, at
least in PHP world? It's sad to see that cool features are pulled away
to indefinite future only because general auditory still uses old
stuff, like old PHP and old browsers, etc. And it's generally not a
matter of performance. WordPress like a popular product as well as all
other big guys should at one moment stand up and help a better world
to come! IE6 and PHP4 must die! :) And then it's just another thing
that is easier to say then - do...

Maybe WordPress just has different priorities.

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Jordi Canals <jcanals at alkivia.net> wrote:
> I just make a check on my plugins as them only work on PHP-5. If there is no
> PHP 5.0.0 or higher installed on server, the plugin just shows an "admin
> warning" and does nothing.
>
> As we do with WordPress, I think we have to encourage to have a reasonable
> current version of PHP, as it is releated also to security. I think PHP-4 is
> not a reasonable current version, and everybody had a lot of time to update
> servers to a newer version. Just consider that PHP-4 support was
> discontinued two years ago. (With the last security fix on Aug, 7 2008
> (thats a long time ago).
>
> I think nobody imagines to write plugins compatible with a WordPress version
> two years old... think the same is about an obsolete PHP version.
>
> Jordi Canals.
>
> 2010/1/15 Shane A. Froebel <shane at bugssite.org>
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Reality the threshold is going to get lower sooner than later when
>> plugins stop supporting PHP4 and I know a lot of good object oriented
>> programing for plugins can only support PHP5.
>>
>> I really is a matter of 2 *maybe 3* versions before we are forced to
>> switch over to PHP5. I love to see it sooner because then I wouldn't
>> have to check for php4 functions.
>>
>> Food for thought. :-)
>>
>> Your Friend, Shane
>> http://bugssite.org/
>>
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-- 
Davit Barbakadze