[wp-hackers] PHP5

[Will Anderson]

In hopes of distracting the "religious" fanatics I'll add this question to
the mix.Does the fact that WordPress chooses to support nearly all users
mean that plugin developers have to?
If you want to screw things up for 40% of users, can't you write a plugin
that uses PHP5 constructs?

Seriously though, I don't understand why everyone is so upset about the
version of PHP that WordPress uses.
The argument that it's slower is only half true. Servers with PHP5 WILL run
WordPress faster (there's nowhere in WordPress that says "I support PHP4, so
run me slowly).
The only place you'll see a slow down is where older (and slower) constructs
are used, rather than ones that are new to PHP5. I don't think this really
contributes THAT much to the speed (though I could be wrong).

Again, I don't think the version that WordPress supports has to dictate what
version plugin developers support, as long as they're willing to leave a
large fraction of the WordPress community out in the cold.
To me, though, that's like creating a Theme that looks good in FireFox,
Opera, Safari, and Chrome (add any other modern, compliant browser you
want), but looks like crap in any version of IE.

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Mike Schinkel
<mikeschinkel at newclarity.net>wrote:

> Me and my typos. Sheesh. I meant:
>
> "Besides that one thing Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
>
> -Mike Schinkel
> http://mikeschinkel.com/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Schinkel" <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net>
> To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 5:36:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] PHP5
>
> > So I mean, supporting PHP4 only really has one reason
> > for going for it and PHP5 has many reason!
>
> "Besides that's one thing Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
>
> (With apologies to those outside the US who are unfamiliar with our US
> History.)
>
> -Mike Schinkel
> http://mikeschinkel.com/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jacob Santos" <wordpress at santosj.name>
> To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 4:06:47 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] PHP5
>
> Lets list the reasons for and against going PHP5:
>
> Against:
>
> 1. Matt Mullenweg be hating PHP5 and he be the God. (Hail Satan!)
> 2. It would leave out 40% of current users (from last posted statistics
> from last year).
> 3. Did I mention Matt Mullenweg not liking PHP5? Okay, good.
>
> For:
>
> 1. PHP5 is faster than PHP4 (Most benchmarks of PHP 5.2.x show
> considerable improvement, PHP5.3 is so much faster than PHP4, that they
> didn't even attempt to compare it).
> 2. PHP5 has PDO, and mysqli.
> 3. PHP5.3 has namespaces!
> 4. PHP5.3 has closures! No more create_function nonsense, you'll be able
> to actually create a real lambda and closure for usage in
> preg_replace_callback().
> 5. PHP5 has better object oriented support, re: visibility, true static
> methods and members, class constants.
> 6. PHP5 has OO chaining: $obj->this()->shit()->is()->awesome();
> 7. Actually being worked on actively (PHP4 is EOL early last year and no
> updates for about 8 months now).
>
> So I mean, supporting PHP4 only really has one reason for going for it
> and PHP5 has many reason!
>
> Jacob Santos
>
>
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-- 
Will Anderson
http://www.itsananderson.com/