Today is the 3 year anniversary of the extremely popular scripting language PHP5. As exciting as that is, today is even more exciting due to the end-of-life annoucement of PHP4 by the PHP team. I have been waiting for this day for a long time. For the last three years there has been this vicious circle of inability to rid the world of PHP4. Now with PHP6 on the way, I think we must move on.
The reason it has been so difficult to get the world to switch to PHP5 is because there are some subtle differences and backwards-incompatibilities. Nothing intensely difficult to upgrade, but to some the benefits just have never been worth it. Still, to others it was due to the fact that web hosts refuse to upgrade to PHP5 for fear of breaking their customer’s PHP4 code due to backwards-incompatibility, so developers, in order to maintain portability do not take advantages of PHP5’s features. Do you see the vicious circle I’m alluding to?
Due to the end-of-life of PHP4 by the official PHP team, along with a wonderful little movement called GOPHP5, all of this may be about to change. GOPHP5 is an initiative by many open source projects to stop support for PHP4 in an attempt to get web hosts as well as other developers to make the switch as well. We have been a PHP5 outfit for some time now, but I strongly recommend if you are a developer to hop on the bandwagon. Go PHP5!
You may read more about the GOPHP5 initiative on their website, as well as all of the projects who are committed to it.
