Skip to main content

End of Support isn't the End of the World

The PHP development team released PHP 5.2.14 last week and with it comes the end of active support for the 5.2 branch. A bit of dissent rippled throughout the community... but is it really a big deal? Contrary to popular belief, downloads from php.net don't come with an expiration date.

There is a lot of legacy code running mission-critical applications. These apps work and are stable so the time, effort, and expense required to upgrade them put doing so very low on a companies' priority lists. A few years ago I worked as a System Administrator for a credit union turned bank; the core processing system was written in PL/I and the ATM switching system was written in COBOL. There are probably more applications written in non-OOP PHP 3 code with register globals running atop a Linux 2.4 kernel than any of us want to acknowledge.

But version numbers are just mile-markers that reference a snapshot of the project at a given time. The development team is continually improving PHP so there will always be a newer, better version just around the corner. If your application is running stable on whatever version you have installed, and you're not using features or extensions that are subject to security or bug fixes in newer versions, then what's the problem? Use the version that works for you (and that your company's compliance officer will let you use).

With that said, don't expect the development team to support your favorite branch forever. PHP is open-source; people are free to participate in its development and do so for a variety of reasons. Just as the resources you can allot to refactoring legacy code are limited, the resources the development team have are limited as well. If you need a version 5.2.15, .16, or beyond then get involved and make it happen.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's Wrong with OOP

Proponents of Object Oriented Programming feel the paradigm yields code that is better organized, easier to understand and maintain, and reusable. They view procedural programming code as unwieldy spaghetti and embrace OO-centric design patterns as the "right way" to do things. They argue objects are easier to grasp because they model how we view the world. If the popularity of languages like Java and C# is any indication, they may be right. But after almost 20 years of OOP in the mainstream, there's still a large portion of programmers who resist it. If objects truly model the way people think of things in the real world, then why do people have a hard time understanding and working in OOP? I suspect the problem might be the focus on objects instead of actions. If I may quote from Steve Yegge's Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns : Verbs in Javaland are responsible for all the work, but as they are held in contempt by all, no Verb is ever permitted to wander about ...
9 comments
Read more

Does Esperanto-USA have a Transparency Problem?

I’ve been an active member of Esperanto-USA for many years, even serving on its board of directors. I wanted to help build a strong, healthy national organization that effectively promotes Esperanto in the United States. But when I stepped down from the board, that desire didn’t end. I continued to bring problems to the attention of the organization, ranging from member rights to strategy to proper governance. I’ve decided to be public about this latest issue because of its seriousness and because of how the board has been secretive about it. The membership deserves to know what is done in their name. What Happened In November 2025, the board of Esperanto-USA sent a formal letter to Esperanto-Ligo en Israelo (ELI) with a copy to UEA, concerning an article published in ELI’s bulletin. The article, written by Eduardo Topol, contained inflammatory political content. And although I agree that the article was extremely offensive, the board’s decision to inj...
Post a Comment
Read more

Composing Music with PHP

I’m not an expert on probability theory, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. And even my Music 201 class from years ago has been long forgotten. But if you’ll indulge me for the next 10 minutes, I think you’ll find that even just a little knowledge can yield impressive results if creatively woven together. I’d like to share with you how to teach PHP to compose music. Here’s an example: You’re looking at a melody generated by PHP. It’s not the most memorable, but it’s not unpleasant either. And surprisingly, the code to generate such sequences is rather brief. So what’s going on? The script calculates a probability map of melodic intervals and applies a Markov process to generate a new sequence. In friendlier terms, musical data is analyzed by a script to learn which intervals make up pleasing melodies. It then creates a new composition by selecting pitches based on the possibilities it’s observed. . Standing on Shoulders Composition doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Bach wa...
9 comments
Read more