PHP 5.3 is around the corner, it’s got a bunch of handy new features. Yet, why am I not excited?

PHP users seem to have a horrible horrible habit of not upgrading quickly (if at all). Looking at recent stats it seems that well over half still seem to be using PHP 4 despite its end of life support at the end of the year. Not to mention yesterday it was announced it would be no longer receiving any security updates! PHP 4.4.9 only seen 5 minor changes to the code and that goes to show how dead its development really is...

So what happens now? How long until namespaces can be used by everybody? One of the most useful things about PHP is the HUGE number of open source projects out there that can meet many project requirements out of the box. However we now have a host of legacy code and lots of it is very very ugly. I've seen my fair share of code that's made me shudder.

IMO, 5.3 is a good direction for PHP. However, PHP users progress slowly. PHP projects take too long to migrate and support new features. Therefore, maybe in 4 years it will be feasible to use name spaces in PHP. Until then, we'll have to leave them out so everybody can run the projects.

Of course, if you are not coding something that will be redistributed and you manage your own servers, you can upgrade straight away. However, how many of you are going to refractor namespaces into a current project? Even if you do this, chances are you will be using an external library, how long till they can be updated? So you could end up constantly jumping between coding styles.

PHP always seems to be chasing other languages, adding new features that have been around for years. Is it too little too late for PHP?