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PHP 5.3.10
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Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
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PHP 5.3.10
« on February 3rd, 2012, 09:43 AM »
So, we're on to 5.3.10, to fix a bug introduced by 5.3.9.

While I understand why 5.3.9 was necessary, I feel more than a little bit disconcerted that 5.3.10 was needed so soon because of a problem introduced by 5.3.9 - especially the nuclear grade vulnerability that was introduced as a consequence (5.3.9 introduces an arbitrary remote code execution vuln)

I think half the problem is that they're pushing towards 5.4 and they're trying to push the language to grow up and shake off some of its heritage but the really disconcerting thing is that - behind the scenes - it's looking more and more like the SMF crapshoot did: more and more of the essentially-volunteer devs are stepping back and some features are being shouted down for little good reason, and more than one capable developer has withdrawn themselves from being part of the 'core' because of their views on the politics.
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Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
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Re: PHP 5.3.10
« Reply #1, on February 3rd, 2012, 12:06 PM »
It's all part of the cycle innit..? Newcomers, new ideas, etc will naturally come to replace ageing concepts and popularity-induced cold feet.
Just like SMF. Wedge is the next part of the cycle. Something else will be the next part, etc.
jQuery is also looking like it's going into this cycle. Maybe NOT for bad reasons, though! To me, jQuery is just what JS should have been from the start, it should be integrated into the language and maybe not any features in the future, that's what 'plugins' are for...

WordPress doesn't look like it's been in that cycle, though. Sure I missed the 1.x/2.x development but it's always ma.tt overseeing the project, so I guess he handled it beautifully, whatever one may want to say about WP...

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
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Re: PHP 5.3.10
« Reply #2, on February 3rd, 2012, 12:36 PM »
On the one hand I want to say it's part of the cycle but on the other I think it's part of a mindset rather than a cycle. Cycle implies that things will change, that the newcomers will join, the old guard leave, and the newcomers become the old guard for the next generation.

In SMF's case, that just isn't happening. The newcomers are put off from sticking around long enough to become the old guard.

jQuery is a special case. While I agree in a lot of ways that it is what JS should have been, the fact remains that JS was never meant to be a properly tooled language in the first place, but a hack added to browsers during the first Browser Wars to differentiate things. It's only been really since IE6 that the language settled down.

WP hasn't been in that cycle, mostly because its founder is still around and there's enough lifeblood flowing both in and out of the ecosystem that it's not running short (you don't have a massive influx of people with no skill and not enough people to support them, and there's not a massive sink of competence disappearing out the ecosystem)
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