Re: PHP Books at Sitepoint

On 12/15/2010 3:54 PM, Kevin Schroeder wrote:

Yes, I know of the migration service. I built it. I can't share data on deliveries of that service (or traffic to that page... I think you just caused a bump :-) ), but the data leans heavily in my favor.

Just because there are companies and sessions at conferences for a certain topic does not mean that they are indicative of the market at large. Look at ZendCon or TEK if you want to get an accurate representation of what is current in the PHP market. Migration from 4 to 5 hasn't been on the radar for several years at the PHP conferences. Same thing as with migration services. Perhaps there are companies doing migrations and making impressions off of conference sessions talking about migration, but it sure ain't us nor any of the people I've talked to today.

That's cool. But the fact that those services still exist today and that they were giving sessions quite recently at major conferences doesn't jive with your assertion that virtually all conversion was done several years ago. I'm pretty deeply involved with one of the largest IBM i conferences, and I know it's not normal for conference planners to include sessions on dead topics just for the heck of it. There are no websites devoted to Java 1.2 (actually, I think Java 1.3 would be a better comparison, since it was released at the same time as PHP4), no consulting companies offering conversion services, no conference sessions for working with or converting Java 1.2. Meanwhile, PHP4 still lives, even after a stake was driven into its heart in 2008. In that sense, PHP is more like RPG than Java! :)

My point was only that PHP5 was not an instant uptake, and that it was in fact a long uptake, and that there are still people moving off of it today. That's at least partly because there were some distinct backwards compatibility issues - issues that are nowhere near as prevalent in the Java world.

Joe