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A lively little discussion developed over the past few days on the DC-PHP developers mailing list. We have a very active developers group here in the DC area – much larger than most cities, in fact. Part of what makes our group great is the diversity of background and experience that is in the group. More after the jump.

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

Last night, I got home to find my copies of the WordPress Bible at my door. This was tremendously exciting as I have been waiting for 8 months for this day. It was exciting and the buzz on Twitter has been tremendous. Pre-sale numbers were huge. The sharing and re-sharing of information about this book has been deafening. More after the jump.

Last night, I was catching up with a friend who is as far from me in lifestyle outlook as you could possibly be. She is a extremely left wing type working for an environmental advocacy organization in DC. I, on the other hand, am an entrepreneur with one foot planted firmly on the right and one foot firmly planted on the left. More after the jump.

If there’s one thing I have been consistent on in the past (almost) 6 years of blogging and engaging on the web, it’s that I believe in the mantra “no sacred cows”. In politics, I confound and confuse members of both parties who look at life through sterilized lenses that reflect their party platform. I will often stir up controversy by dragging people into a process of debate that, while respectful, causes them to think and re-think their positions. At least that’s the goal. I am a fiercely independent thinker and though some of my closest friends are on the left, I’ve ruthlessly challenged the parts of the left that I don’t like while supporting the ones I do. I’ve done the same thing with folks on the right. More after the jump.

The other day, I wrote the popular 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.9. As usual, most people are very excited about the new release which is now in beta and available for testing. In the article, I made a few fundamental errors which I have since corrected.

Notably, I mentioned that WordPress 3.0 would be going to PHP 5. This was based on conversations I had with a core developer which I now realized I misunderstood. Kinda. WordPress will probably not be dropping PHP 4 support in WordPress 3.0 but as core developer Mark Jaquith suggests:

Some things already require PHP 5, like time zone support or oEmbed. There are no plans that I know of to remove PHP 4 support in 3.0 — last I checked we still had 12% of WP installs using PHP 4.

I see more of a natural and gradual deprecation of PHP 4. We’re very much open to making new features require PHP 5 if it would be a pain to make them PHP 4 compatible.

As a PHP developer, I am on board with calls for PHP 5 support. PHP 4 has been end of life (EOL) since August 8, 2008. That basically means that there will be no more releases, no more security patches, no more nothing. It’s done. Stick a fork in it. However, as Matt mentioned on stage at WordCamp NYC this weekend, there are still 12% of WordPress installations using PHP 4 hosting. He breaks that down as approximately 2M installs, the size of a major American city. More precisely, that’s approximately the size of Philadelphia.