From the ‘Who Needs Windows XP Anyways?’ files:
One of the biggest open source PHP releases in years is now out and you can count me among those that are excited and eager to deploy and use it.
Among the big ticket items in this release is the inclusion of the Zend Optimizer+ Opcode cache, which I first wrote about in February.
“OPcache improves PHP performance by storing precompiled script bytecode in shared memory, thereby removing the need for PHP to load and parse scripts on each request,” the PHP.net manual explains.
Yeaah I know, there are other options – notably APC – but to have this included as part of the core of PHP will likely result in a more optimized PHP experience.
PHP 5.5 also includes a new password hashing API that I first wrote about in November of 2012. The TL;dr version of what this does is it will improve security in a good way by making it easier for developers to use secure password hashing.
“The password hashing API provides an easy to use wrapper around crypt() to make it easy to create and manage passwords in a secure manner.”
And oh yeah, PHP 5.5 will not support Windows XP and Server 2003. Considering that those systems are 10+ years old, is anyone surprised?
You can check out the full list of changes in the changelog.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.