Matt has a good post on the recent push to make people use PHP 5. He makes several good points, and I’m just jumping on the same bandwagon.. forcing a version # change, just because the engine works better is pointless. Going into the political arena a little bit, making people switch to PHP 5 is like changing CAFE standards, it won’t do a thing for the billions of cars already out there, and it won’t change the basic dependence on crude oil. It’s just a lot of hot air to make the choir sing to themselves, again.

I’ve been running PHP 5 on my systems for the past 3 years, without any issues. Even some of the code I wrote in PHP 4, works flawlessly (with the same bugs) in PHP 5 as PHP4. Which brings me to the main point.. End Users don’t care or want to know what the engine is doing . If the application does something they want, they’ll use it. If it’s easy to install and setup, they’ll use it. PHP 5 as a language doesn’t bring anything to the end user experience. Sure, the code may be faster, more secure, and has better json/xml/stream/nameyourthing support, but the if the application already gives the user what he needs, why should the underlying language change? Web 2.0 is old so, Web 3.11, Web 95, Web XP whatever you want to call it, will force a change in paradigms, this change will probably necessitate the upgrade, not a decree from a legion of uber programmers. Those guys are doing what seems like a thankless job right now, in terms of laying the framework and foundation, for what will be the next “revolution”. Old applications that work well, and have millions of installs, won’t just force people to upgrade to PHP 5 when they become PHP 5 only.

If phpMyAdmin does a lot of the stuff most MySQL users need, right now in PHP 4, what will PHP 5 do that will make people switch? Nothing, when the PHP 5 only version of phpMyAdmin comes out, all you’ll see is the number of downloads for the PHP 4 version continue to climb, or nothing, people will just not switch. The only thing that will help convince a host or an end user to upgrade to PHP 5, is if “phpMyAdmin (the PHP 5 edition)” did something that took advantage of MySQL 5.1 or 6 exclusively, OR they developed a killer new feature that every MySQL user would want to use.

“PHP 5 gives you cleaner and faster code”, this saying is completely pointless. If your app is already being used by millions of users, you have millions of users who think your code is cleaner and faster than the other guys.. it’s not broke.. what are you trying to fix?

Also, one last thing to remember is that a lot of PHP 5 features were requested by “enterprises”, that do not release their code to the public. In the past two years, I’ve talked with at least 5 organizations that use PHP 5 on their public facing sites, but do not advertise that to the public, yet the number of people served per month, is in the billions (if you combine all 5 organizations). The rate of adoption for PHP 5 is fine. The reason why people don’t see the need to upgrade, is because their needs are being met.

Find new needs, and meet them in PHP 5 only land, this is what we in the PHP community pride ourselves for right? We’re coming up with the cool new applications, unlike other languages and their frameworks which just provide you with a really nice and fast way to do the same old thing?