71–80 of 122 posts
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I feel your pain. Yesterday client's "wp developer" asked me to downgrade from 7.2 to 5.6 because "7.x is not stable enough".
You should know it means his understanding on 7.x is not stable enough.
For a second, after reading the title, I thought PHP as a whole was end of life. That'd be fun. Which also made me think - does anybody know an example of a widely used programming language that voluntarily discontinued?
Note that multiple Linux distributions will still be supporting it, in some cases for a very long time after.
Exactly. These EOL dates aren't really helpful in a world where most people just use a handful of distros. WordPress keeps sending the same unhelpful message and I hate it. Just the other day, a somewhat technical client of mine called me to ask if his PHP 7.0 installation has gaping security holes. I said no, you're using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, you'll be fine until April 2021. If you force an upgrade now, you might run o…
I'm not sure you can just hide behind the LTS assurance of the OS, they can't guarantee every single package in their repos will remain safe. Plenty of packages in Ubuntu LTS releases reach EoL far far before OS EoL.
Yeah, yeah. Go tell that to my 10x php self-taught guy who's still running php 5.4 on a windows server 2003 in a wamp installation. He upgraded the bundled mysql with mariadb last year by dropping the executable in the folder (edit: just checked out, and the drop-in has been reverted back to mysql 5.0 because the upgrade path is impossible because apache 2.2). And of course this in-house guru for anything that happen…
Besides the "doesn't bother updating the passwords" point, this sort of "it's old so let's change it" attitude is unfortunately so pervasive in the software industry and I find it massively irritating because it's the same reason why a lot of software has gotten increasingly unstable over time. Instead of making only fixes and bringing a platform towards maturity they do the exact opposite, adding plenty of new bugs…
If you don't update your software regularly, then future updates get harder and harder. Unfortunately, future updates might include security patches that are critical. At that point your choices are both bad: do a major catch-up update under crisis mode, or decline the update and roll the dice on a security incident (which will put you into crisis mode if if happens).
Incremental LAMP stack updates are so easy... they rarely break things, and there are so many other people doing the same thing, there is tons of community advice and help. If a developer is not capable of doing that, what ARE they capable of doing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides the "doesn't bother updating the passwords" point, this sort of "it's old so let's change it" attitude is unfortunately so pervasive in the software industry and I find it massively irritating because it's the same reason why a lot of software has gotten increasingly unstable over time. Instead of making only fixes and bringing a platform towards maturity they do the exact opposite, adding plenty of new bugs…
"If it ain't broke don't fix it" is always good advice. But some ancient duct-taped WAMP situation with insecure passwords needs to just be set on fire. Jesus christ, running Windows Server 2003 alone is something he should be fired for if its connected to the internet.
Never look under the hood at any of the companies involved in silicon development then. Server 2003 would be an upgrade for many, many tester machines.
To get to the "why dont they update" question:
1. Proprietary hardware with a custom driver.
2. Barely functional proprietary software, good luck getting it to run on anything except Windows XP/95/3.11.
3. The tester is LONG out of support.
4. The company that makes it is either out of business or was bought up by Teradyne/Advantest
5. The software is licensed specifically for that hardware it came with(CPU/Motherboard guids/serials, MAC addresses, etc).
6. If there is even a replacement for the tester, it will cost a minimum of $500k to replace, probably $1MM or more.
7. A customer requirement is to have external access, as much as IT fights it, the tester must also have internet access so the customer can send/receive files with their own workflow.
Sometimes we got lucky and I was able to push forward multiple upgrade projects moving testers from Windows XP to Windows 10. This was the case with most anything using a National Instruments GPIB where the software wasnt also locked down. Since National Instruments makes drives compatible with Windows 10 for their PCI cards, we were able to transition to Windows 10 on an entire floor once I developed a compatibility shim to get around the non-UAC assumptions of the tester software.
Example from 2018: A tester that runs on Windows XP meets all of the above. Capacitors on the P4 motherboard blew up, company was bought by Advantest, but they dont make that tester anymore or even have a replacement. It is one of three left on planet earth. What do we do? Replace everything we can. New RAM, SSD using an IDE to SATA bridge, PSU, etc. We sent the motherboard to one of our internal techs who replaced every single cap on the motherboard, by hand.
A few days later, it is back in action. It will remain in this condition for another decade or more, with internet access. This is normal in anything involved with manufacturing, and yes, it will all end badly. Thankfully, I am out of the Bay Area now and not at all involved with hardware manufacturing or that company, no longer supporting internet connected Windows 3.11, RHEL3, AIX4, and SunOS 2.6 machines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides the "doesn't bother updating the passwords" point, this sort of "it's old so let's change it" attitude is unfortunately so pervasive in the software industry and I find it massively irritating because it's the same reason why a lot of software has gotten increasingly unstable over time. Instead of making only fixes and bringing a platform towards maturity they do the exact opposite, adding plenty of new bugs…
"it's old so let's change it" That's very rarely the thought process in the real world when you're dealing with a production system though. Most developers who have the seniority and experience to make the call to upgrade something aren't just upgrading for the fun of it. It's more like... "it's old and hundreds of security patches and performance improvements have been released in versions that have come along since…
you and i's experience varies greatly, Ive worked at a number of firms that update things based solely on age(and boredom) and nothing else... thats what happens when non-tech people steer the ship. I also see this happening a lot to justify someone existence on payroll.
Yeah, yeah. Go tell that to my 10x php self-taught guy who's still running php 5.4 on a windows server 2003 in a wamp installation. He upgraded the bundled mysql with mariadb last year by dropping the executable in the folder (edit: just checked out, and the drop-in has been reverted back to mysql 5.0 because the upgrade path is impossible because apache 2.2). And of course this in-house guru for anything that happen…
The issue with PHP is devs like that guy.
Note that multiple Linux distributions will still be supporting it, in some cases for a very long time after.
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Those smaller companies will find out maintenance is costly either way.
And it's worse than just maintenance cost. Do you think a good PHP dev wants to join a shop that's still on 5?