Ask HN: Do you think PHP has improved with PHP 7? - jamesmp98
======
debacle
It still has many of the same problems old PHP has. More speed is always
great, but speed wasn't PHP's major issue. It's still mired in an interpreter
that has a lot of issues with more abstract/higher level stuff (though I will
say that's getting _far_ better), and a team that doesn't embrace BC breaks as
much as they should (my opinion - the stdlib sucks).

Extensions have always been PHP's strong point, but some newer stuff isn't as
supported as well as it is in Python or Node because of PHP's lack of good
async code.

Overall it's a step in the right direction, but PHP needs more big changes.

------
LarryMade2
As a programmer of many years, I don't jump onto new features till they are
very commonplace, If I were to implement PHP7 right now I would be hard
pressed to find hosting that supports it.

I have PHP7 on my dev system, had to make some adjustments to get my 5.x code
working again due to deprecation and syntax enforcement this included a couple
lines in the TCPDF library I use. So for me the immediate impact of PHP7 will
be the breaking of some legacy code. Then maybe, in a few years, the new
features will be ubiquitous enough for me to implement.

------
kingofspain
Can't speak to it myself just yet but I'll be moving a big web app from 5.6 to
7 in the new year and I'm hoping the good news I've heard so far holds true. I
think there was a recent post from Slack(?) who mentioned some nice
improvements.

~~~
kkoppenhaver
DailyMotion[1] and Tumblr[2] have recently moved to PHP7. In addition,
WordPress[3] is moving towards PHP7 as well.

[1] [http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-
daily...](http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/)

[2] [https://engineering.tumblr.com/post/152998126990/php-7-at-
tu...](https://engineering.tumblr.com/post/152998126990/php-7-at-tumblr)

[3] (from 2015) [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/10/wordpress-and-
php...](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/10/wordpress-and-php7/)

------
whichdan
For any curious former-PHP developers like myself:
[http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.new-
features.php](http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.new-features.php)

------
rurban
Speaking as former PHP developer, yes. Immensely. Very impressive feature set
and performance. Now just the jit is missing.

