Anyone know good php4 and php5 popularity comparison?

That's all cool. But you said "lots", "most everyone".
"lots" - means ...eer what does it mean?
"most everyone" - means from 51% to 100%.
It's interesting to find an up-to-date research on this subject but not just a accasional hit between 51-100% made by guess. I believe you that many people are using php5 and I know this myself. There is no problem. I just need to know _how_many_ people in exact numbers. Like I said, wordpress will not move to php5 until php4 share drops below 10%. So php4 users share should be somewhat above 10% now. So having statistics which would define exact number would be great. This helps me to decide should I move to php5 or I need to wait for 6 months or a few months more. Thanks.

 

Well short of doing what anyone else would do (google) you're probably not going to find your answer. I can pretty much guarantee it's gonna 90% or more, and from that graph, if that line continued for PHP5 it would be at its peak by June this year

 

Yeah mate, there is no exact science here. Even nexen is basically an aproximation, since they do not scan every single website on the planet, and the numbers are possibly skewed because of websites that are no longer maintained and sitting on old servers. If you are so concerned about the 10% people you might loose you should just build your project in PHP4. But remember that using PHP5 can also be a marketing advantage. You are using newer technology and your site will be faster in cases (xml handing, etc)

Also, people on dedicated servers do not need to reinstall their entire server to get a new php version, they simply need to update PHP itself. This can easily be done via the command line or tools such as cpanel. I think there's very little reason to start a new project in PHP 4 in this day and age, but if you feel so strongly about it, maybe you should.

 

Move to PHP5. If everyone waits for someone else to decide when PHP4 is no longer useful, it'll never go away.

 

what more advantages can php5 give to the end-user except security and xml handling (which is advantage for programmer not for user and can be written in php4)?

 

Now wait a sec, I thought you weren't interested in that kind of stuff in this topic. Certainly you must know that there is more than just improved XML handling.

This latest question doesn't jive with a previous statement of yours:

Do you not feel we are recommending what we feel would be best, or are you now just playing devil's advocate?

 

ofcourse I'm not interested now what difference between php4, php5 or c# - for programmer. But what are the marketing advantages of supporting php5 for end customer (except xml support which can be done the same in php4 by my own functions and except security, like i said xml support is not customer benefit, it's a small benefit for a programmer)? This was the question. And it's the second reply - still no answer.

 

http://www.gophp5.org

http://www.php.net/archive/2008.php

So in other words you're asking what the difference is between a version that is no longer maintained versus a version that is faster with more features and is actively maintained? I'd call that marketing when you are able to tell clients they are on a better platform, as opposed to being relegated to a growingly archaic platform that for some reason you don't want to let die.

You're not intimidated by PHP5, are you? The only reason to hold onto PHP4 is legacy code that is not forward compatible. If you are dealing with new projects then there is absolutely no reason to use PHP4, and so far you've only expressed interest in the differing user base between the two versions, and have not mentioned the *requirement* to use it.

And what do you mean by "try harder"? Has this become a challenge now? If you want to use a slower, older, less feature-rich, unsupported version, then by all means have a ball.

 

paulim, i'm not talking about xml support being an advantage to the customer, what is an advantage is that due to the better xml support the users' website should respond faster and have less memory usage. That is a biiig advantage for a customer right there.

 

I couldn't agree more

 

I also have to add that while you keep bringing up XML support, it was only used as an example and not a final testimony (though it is a good enough reason as SimpleXML can shave antiquated expat parsing down to 1 line).

There are sooo many other reasons to use PHP5... OOP (no longer arrays on steroids), PDO, SPL, DOM, XSL, hashes, exception handling, etc.

Plus a load of handy new functions:
http://php.net/manual/en/migration5.functions.php
...as well as numerous bug fixes.

And yes, I know your original question wasn't 4 vs 5 features, so no need to reply with "of course, but...". With all these new features it will cut your development time down, which can either be reflected in your clients' invoices (happier clients with more money to spend) or the check they cut you (happier you with more money for less development time). So there's your marketing angle, whether or not you want to advertise it.

So back to your original-original question. You'll never find a diagram outlining one programming language's version vs another's popularity, be it PHP (4 v 5), ASP (classic v .NET), C (classic v ++), and so on. No one really documents this. WordPress may very well be relying on their own internal research. As you have your 33% "guestimate", they have their 10%.