[drupal-devel] I do not care about PHP 5

[Gabor Hojtsy]

>> it all later.  Whether later is December 2005 or December 2007,
>> you'll  still
>> have to go back and fix it.
> 
> By then, PHP6 will be there, incompatbile again, and I'd need to fix 
> anyways. And who knows, it's possible that 5.0.6 will break stuff again 
> and I need to fix my code again. No, thanks, I code for PHP4.

Coding for PHP 4 does not help, as similar fixes were intorduced in PHP
4.4.0 too. Before ranting against PHP 5 support, you should really go
after what was changed, and why it was neccessery:

  http://tinyurl.com/bo7pr

Read the anchored comment, not the blogpost! What this says to us:

  - PHP 4.4.0 / PHP 5.0.5 fix several crash bugs (people will upgrade
  to these, and they do it rightly)

  - unfortunately some of these bugs were caused because PHP was
  forgiving in handling references, and this resulted in problems,
  which can only be fixed by making PHP stricter, breaking BC

Read what Derick things about this change being good for making PHP
applications better:

  http://derickrethans.nl/fanmail.php

Sure, if you are not going on this route, you can do so. But be warned
that quite some Drupal developers are or at least try to be on the
bleeding edge with actual software (to get bug fixes, use new features),
so actually these core developers will not be able to use your code. Eg.
last time it was asked, drupaldevs.org ran on PHP 5, JonBob, Killes and
others having development spaces there.

Kalid B suggested that I should try to escalate this to the developers.
There is no need to escalate this, as you will see from Derick's
fanmail, this was escalated enough. Those who don't like this situation
should either improve their code or submit a patch to the Zend Engine
itself, this is the situation. I don't think it is a problem, if Drupal
comes out of this as a better written application. I doubt Rasmus will
tell you otherwise at EurOSCON (and I doubt he is using Drupal on PHP 4).

Goba