[wp-hackers] PHP5 and WP Development

[Tor Bjornrud]

On Aug 11, 2004, at 4:35 PM, Ryan Boren wrote:
>
> 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

I agree that this is a real piece of software, and we shouldn't 
engineer for the sake engineering. For the record, I'm also against 
masturbation as it causes hairy palms and makes you go blind ;)

I hope my inquiry didn't seem like I was saying a whole rewrite was in 
order, because quite honestly it's not.   The classes that do exist 
could probably benefit from some better typing of the members (to be a 
little more safe), and from everything I've read the mysqli extension 
is much faster and more secure.  i.e. 
http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-mysqli.php#Heading5
These aren't pie-in-the-sky theoretical practices, but honest to 
goodness changes that in the end could make WordPress a cleaner faster 
product.

If the decision is made to let php5 code in, it means maintaining two 
codebases, either by version detection or branching of the cvs.  What 
I'm trying to determine is if we're postponing these changes due to 
immaturity of the new libraries or lack of php5 acceptance to end 
users... all valid reasons.  Alternatively, will we immediately fork 
the code and maintain different trees to save on package size of files 
or maintain it all in one tree with version detection, giving those who 
do run php5 a better product?