[wp-hackers] PHP5 and WP Development

[Ryan Boren]

On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 22:00 +0200, Henning Seljenes wrote:
> AFAIK, oo programming isn't any faster (in fact it might be slower)
> then the current method Wordpress uses. While the zend ii engine
> sounds quite nice, I think it would be best for the base of wordpress
> to run on php4 and if there is something really nice avaliable in
> php5, the script to check which version the user is running and decide
> whether or not to use that method.

That sounds more sensible.

I'm not Matt, so this is just my opinion and not policy.

We're building a product, not a gee-whiz engineer's toy platform.  I
personally am not interested in engineering for the sake of engineering.
It's just masturbation and doesn't do anything for the user.  We try to
clean up and speed up WordPress with each release.  That does not
require re-architecting it whenever the next great thing comes along.

As far as OO being exciting, maybe a decade or so ago.  It's just a
another tool in the toolbox now.  We use classes here and there in
WordPress, as it seems fitting.  More stuff will probably move into
classes.  I don't feel the need to rework WordPress into a vision of OO
purity, however.  This is a real product with real users, not someone's
thesis.  I don't want WordPress to fall into the "let's engineer a
platform" trap.

Ryan


> On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:02:35 -0400, Tor Bjornrud <bjornrud at msu.edu> wrote:
> > Quick question...
> > 
> > Any policy on when, if at all, php5 dependent code will be allowed into
> > the WordPress codebase?
> > I presume that it wouldn't be an option for at least a year or two. If
> > it is in the crystal ball, even very far away, are there plans to
> > maintain two separate forks to keep php4 users happy?
> > 
> > I only ask, because I'm curious if devs are excited about the php5 oo
> > support, and mysqli extensions that might go a long way to clean and
> > speed things up with WordPress.  I'd love to see wordpress be new and
> > shiny with the new php5 structures, but don't know if we have the
> > resources/drive to maintain two versions for a while.  Just curious as
> > to how everyone else felt.