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As PHP 5.6, Still Used By a Large Number of Websites, Approaches Its End of Life Deadline, Some Worry About the Consequences (linkedin.com)

Posted by msmash on from the ticking-time-bomb dept.

An anonymous reader writes: I know PHP isn't to some devs liking, but chances are you know people who work with PHP or have sites that are built with it. PHP 5.6 and 7.0 are shortly coming to the end of the support period for security patches, so what plans have you made to migrate code and sites to newer platforms? With apparently huge numbers (80%) of sites still running PHP 5.6, there appears to be little industry acknowledgement of the issue. Is there a ticking PHP Time Bomb waiting to go off?

4 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Explain That to Clients... by michiganbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know there are still sites out there that run on PHP 5.6 (and earlier!) that should really be moved on, either updated for PHP 7.2 or if the code is unmaintainable due to years of abuse by developers, simply rebuilt in a modern framework.

    Sure, let me just go back to the hundreds of small businesses we've built websites for over the past 10 years and tell them their sites need to be "simply rebuilt". I promise you that 95% of them will see no problem with leaving their PHP 5.6, 5.4, 5.2, etc... websites alone because "they still work fine". Why would they pay us money to rebuild them?

    The older websites probably have horrible looking admin interfaces making work flow slow and cumbersome...

    Maybe, but the site owners know how to use that admin interface, and getting them to that point was like pulling teeth. Now you want to train them on a brand new interface? Good luck.

    I'm not saying this guy doesn't have some points, just that he doesn't seem to live in the real world.

  2. Re:Shoulda thought about that... by alvinrod · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I wonder how many of those sites are so old that when they were first made, PHP was the sane choice?

  3. Re:Shoulda thought about that... by jellomizer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I really havn't heard of any good replacements to PHP? All the popular languages seems to want you to code your WebServer in its language vs. Using a tried and true one.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Re:Shoulda thought about that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nowadays we have environments, languages, and frameworks that are much nicer than anything PHP has to offer.

    Such as?

    PHP is still widely used because it's fast (performing) and fast to develop in, free, well-documented and has a huge framework library and developer base to draw on.

    That doesn't make it a good language, but it does make it the one to beat. I have yet to see anything that can do what PHP can do. All the "better" tools are slower, take twice the development time, lack turnkey solutions, or are obscure enough that you need to do a months-long search to put together a (high-priced) development team.