Derick Rethans has posted the notes from the recent PHP 6 meeting in Paris. All I can say is wow! PHP has a bright future. Good job guys.
I’ve also been impressed with the new upgrade notes for 5.1. Good job there, too.
I’ve read over the whole thing and I like what I see. One thing did jump out at me.
We also discussed whether we should even allow Unicode mode to be turned off as current micro benchmarks show that the Unicode implementations of some of the string functions are up to 300% slower, and whole applications up to 25% slower. Disallowing Unicode mode to be turned off is expected to slow down the adoption of PHP 6 too as many ISPs would be reluctant to install a version that immediately slows down the applications of their users.
I am definitely not familiar with all the issues involved, but wouldn’t this make it hard to write general purpose PHP applications? Programs would have to check whether unicode was on or off? Wouldn’t that checking be slow and complicated, too?
I think its great to discuss ways to improve adoption of PHP 6 so far ahead. It looks like APC will be included. I think thats great news on the adoption front.
I wonder, though, if anyone has gone and asked hosting companies what features they might like to see in PHP 6? I also wonder if it would be helpful to have two upgrade guides: one for programmers and one for hosts. Perhaps even a separate Hosting PHP Applications section as part of the PHP manual. (With things like “How do I find out which PHP script sent out this spam?”)
PHP hosting concerns are not always the same as PHP programmer concerns. Hosts are important to the adoption of PHP and throwing them some love can only be a good thing for the platform as a whole.
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The bit about a manual for hosters is a fanstastic idea. You’re exactly right about the different natures of the two audiences (programmer vs hoster).
[...] Jeff has posted some very positive feelings. Likewise think there’s some great stuff coming. [...]
[...] I was reading the minutes of the php developers meeting in regards to php 6. I agree with the idea of including APC into the php distribution. I also like the idea in jeff moore’s blog post about asking web hosts input into the php development. They provide the platform for a lot of web applications. the most import thing i was looking at was the namespace discussion. I hope they implement it. It will make a lot of my code cleaner. which is a good thing. Please PHP develpers… please!!!! [...]
PHP 6 – A glimpse into the future
Derick Rethans has posted the notes from the recent PHP 6 meeting in Paris.
Some of the new features are the introduction of Unicode and deprecation of Register globals, Magic quotes, Safe mode, Register long arrays and others.
On Professional PHP the…
what about the previous discussions about doing JIT-compiled PHP in version 6, like using the Parrot virtual machine?
[...] Professional PHP Web Development with PHP, PHP Advocacy and Best Practices. « A Glimpse into the Future: PHP 6 [...]
how do u get the php6 compiler
Great article. I disagree though with asking the hosting companies what features they want – IMO, they have nothing to do with PHP.
Like your blog. Sending best wishes from Viena.