PHP 5.4.0 released

Posted Mar 4, 2012 15:41 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

PHP is maintainable - if you set about it in the right way using good software engineering practices - code style guidelines, unit tests, reviews, CI etc.

Anything is maintainable if you're investing enough care and effort. People are maintaining large assembly language programs, after all. The real question is whether maintaining something in PHP or assembly language is worth the trouble when there are lots of other approaches that let you achieve the same level of maintainability with less effort (while probably also improving all sorts of other quality metrics to boot). In the case of assembly language, most people have figured out for themselves what they prefer, which is why there are much fewer large assembly language programs around than there used to be.

Having said that, PHP is great. It is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread. Everybody should be using PHP all the time. It would make us Django people look so much more competent and efficient by comparison.