Ugh, now suhosin is TWO versions behind.<p>Everyone please donate so he doesn't give up!<p><a href="http://hardened-php.net/donate.45.html" rel="nofollow">http://hardened-php.net/donate.45.html</a><p>(also: suhosin github page <a href="https://github.com/stefanesser/suhosin/issues" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/stefanesser/suhosin/issues</a> )
Thanks to everyone working on PHP for all of their hard work. Looking forward to using that new password hashing API in future production systems in particular, once 5.5 goes final.
"We also dropped support for Windows XP and 2003."<p>Well, that sucks. And everybody was laughing/bitching/both at MS for dropping support for them with VS 2012.
It strikes me that several of the languages that gained popularity at the turn of the century are having a bit of an identity crisis in the face of their increasing irrelevance. This is especially evident in PHP, but I'm beginning to feel the same about Java in the face of JDK8.<p>With the new breed of popular languages (Ruby, Python, Scala, Clojure etc.) heavily influenced by functional programming, it seems as if the incumbents are desperate to remain relevant by adding comparable features with little consideration for their impact on the language as a whole.<p>For me, PHP has become (quite some time ago actually) a "kitchen sink" of a language; if another language has it, it's a fair bet that PHP will try to add it at some point in the future.
BTW:<p>5.4.9 final will be tagged next week, November 19th and released on Thursday the 22nd.<p>Changelog:<p><a href="https://raw.github.com/php/php-src/PHP-5.4.9/NEWS" rel="nofollow">https://raw.github.com/php/php-src/PHP-5.4.9/NEWS</a>
Where is the list of deprecated features? At this point PHP really doesn't need new features as much as it needs an internal cleanup of its API's and Libraries and a complete re-write of its "VM"
> <i>THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!</i><p>Interesting thing to say given that php.net itself runs a development version of PHP.
Why do I have to laugh when I read the new feature list?<p>Why are people still using this?<p>One negative aspect of open source is that it prevents failed technologies from disappearing.