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Comment by samuellevy | Hacker News Reader

They won't support the code; that's not their job. They will restart the server when it goes down, and handle firewalls/security/keep their servers clean of root kits, etc.

Dreamhost, as an example (seeing as I use them), just upgraded all of their servers to support PHP 5.4, which is much better than any of the other hosts I've found. They're cheap, give relatively good support, and have recent versions of PHP available. If there's a problem with PHP or apache, that isn't broken application code, they'll fix it.

With python or ruby, you're on your own.

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So in other words, the application will work just fine the day you sign off assuming the client doesn't update the language core.

Which is no different than with Dreamhost in this scenario. If, for example, PHP 5.X or 6.X ends up breaking your code, it's not like Dreamhost is going to debug it.

There's no functional difference here between PHP and any other language except that the hosting provider will automatically update PHP. And there's no guarantee that won't bork something else (which they will also not support).

  > just upgraded all of their servers to support PHP 5.4...

They start supporting the newest version, not upgrade everything to 5.4. They do not force you to upgrade, you decide if you do that.

No responsible webhost would just roll out a new major version of PHP without warning. Dreamhost have made their servers support it, which means that it is now an option that you can pick, along with PHP 5.2, and 5.3, in multiple modes (cgi, fastcgi, etc.).

But even so, if I build some PHP code that isn't future-proof for even the warranty period that I offer on any code, then I've got to fix it at my cost. If I build some code that, in 3 years time becomes incompatible with a new version of PHP, then it can be fixed then. I can't be expected to predict the future of PHP and build forever-proof code, though.

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