Microsoft Support

[Fothered]

Hello Larry,

I was just wondering if you could please let me know your thoughts on the recent announcement that Microsoft will no longer be supporting PHP from version 8 onwards?
Do you think that it will mean that PHP will disappear? There are quite a few PHP frameworks that might also be affected too. Do you think there might be some 'workarounds' that will keep PHP from falling away? I love PHP and think it's a great language, and the idea of it dieing out is a little bit sad:(

Thank you for your time:)
Kind regards,
Andrew.

[Larry]

Thanks for the question! I'm not terribly worried about this. Microsoft said they're not going to provide builds of PHP for Windows anymore. Certainly someone else will pick up the torch.

Also, to me, this is more of an issue for people learning or developing on Windows. I don't have hard numbers but I assume the vast majority of servers using PHP are running Linux. 

[Fothered]

Hello Larry:)

You're welcome! Thank you so much for that, that's a huge weight off my chest:)
A lot of friends have been telling me that PHP is basically obsolete now and that this is the final nail in the coffin for it, and that it's time to move on to something like Javascript or Python, so it's great to hear your opinion!

Thank you so much again for getting back to me and letting me know what you think:) (And for the awesome books!)
Kindest regards:)
Andrew.

[Larry]

Glad to hear it! For what it's worth, haters have been predicting the death of PHP for forever. But it's still in use by 80% of sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia, and everything WordPress. It's a zillion years from obsolete! 

And, honestly, anyone claiming you should move from PHP to Python has NO IDEA what they're talking about. Python is a fine language, but the notion of going from PHP to Python for web development is bonkers.