Per Jessen wrote:
Richard Heyes wrote:
When U write code, U must not be worried 'bout the next upgrade of
your server!
Of course you should. Writing code with every eventuality in mind is
simply ludicrous.
Umm, I beg to differ. A developer should not need to worry about a
possible/future upgrade of the runtime platform. I certainly don't
worry about the next release of gcc or glibc when I write C.
I can live with both sides of the argument.
All the SQL scripts I write SHOULD still work with a later version of the
database engine, but changes to make things compatible with standards can
cause problems with that. So I need to test scripts following a major release.
PHP upgrades have certainly broken backwards compatibility, but then I've had
similar problems with the Borland C compilers as well. But at least Borland
attempt to update things to at least compile in later versions and warn of the
'errors'
gcc has had problems and I see various posts about 'not using version xxx' for
building yyy because it's broken. So we all have to live with the possibility
that a later version may not ACTUALLY work for us - and wait for the problem
to be fixed either in gcc or the application. ( Wasn't there a problem with
PHP5 and some version of gcc? )
I don't agree with a lot of the 'changes' that are being forced into PHP5 and
certainly feel that they should have been kept to PHP6, but the real problem
to date has been BACKPORTING some of these changes TO PHP4 rather than having
frozen any 'development' of PHP4 a lot earlier. I never used PHP4 and I would
prefer not to have to worry about it now, but projects I am using still
maintain backwards compatibility rather than also freezing a version that
works with PHP4.X and then moving developments forward. Currently I'm looking
at a lot of 'deprecated' messages from PHP5.3.x and wondering "Do I fix them
and risk problems with PHP4 compatibility or do I just switch off the error?"
Some ISP's are still only supporting rather ancient versions of PHP4. They
should simply be warned of the security risks. Some ISP's have a PHP5
offering, but again an older version simply because it causes less problems
when converting from PHP4. PHP5.3 is going to throw up another round of
problems which makes a move from PHP4 even more time consuming so there should
be a serious discussion as to *IF* that should be allowed? Keeping moving the
goal posts even further from an environment into which PHP4 applications can
be ported easily is the problem, rather than the switch from PHP4 to PHP5 pre
say :(
Lets request that PHP5.3 is not released at this time, but instead an effort
is put in to get all the major web applications at least running in PHP5.2
before even more changes are introduced.
And a beta release of PHP6 with a clean unicode base would be nice ...
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Lester Caine - G8HFL
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