PHP’s Legacy Problem

March 1, 2021 Alex Woodie

PHP is one of the most popular languages on the Web, with arguably billions of lines of code in use across hundreds of thousands of applications. But that long history of successful use exposes a problem for PHP that IBM i shops will be all-too familiar with: a severe reluctance to upgrade. A recent survey by Perforce puts PHP’s legacy situation in perspective.

In January, Perforce (which owns Zend) published its 2021 PHP Landscape Report, which is based on a survey of 670 developers and administrators that Perforce conducted last fall. That was just before the delivery of PHP …