PHP's long-lived popularity means there's a huge amount of ancient PHP articles and tutorials still out there on the web that use the old library. Because these articles are both old and widely linked-to, they tend to come up when newbies search for PHP help. So they learn how to do things the wrong/deprecated way.
Resources like PHP the Right Way (http://www.phptherightway.com/) help counter this, but it'll continue to be a problem as long as using the old library doesn't cause any obvious problems like immediate crashes, screaming in-your-face error messages, etc.
I maintain an early 2000's php website that is pretty functional and has a lot of features, but uses the classic spaghetti code. I can't exactly just switch to PDO without considerable time investment, and otherwise things are working just fine. I don't think this is an uncommon scenario.
I converted an OSS application that I wrote back in '03 to PDO in just a few hours. It actually helped me find security holes because of strong typing in bound parameters. Have a go!
lmm: (For some reason your post doesn't have a reply link) These are usually webapps for department-specific needs, and I generally find PHP to be easier. I have a few python things that I use on the backend, as well as a plethora of bash scripts. But, I admit to knowing PHP more than Python. (I'm in a smallish company, so I end up wearing a lot of hats)
generalpf: I will do so! Do you have any go-to references that you prefer? Or shall I just dig through the PHP docs?
> For some reason your post doesn't have a reply link
I think that for a comment at some level of nesting N, the ability to replay is delayed by Y seconds. IIRC this is to prevent stupid back-and-forth arguments.
Are, nope.
PHP's long-lived popularity means there's a huge amount of ancient PHP articles and tutorials still out there on the web that use the old library. Because these articles are both old and widely linked-to, they tend to come up when newbies search for PHP help. So they learn how to do things the wrong/deprecated way.
Resources like PHP the Right Way (http://www.phptherightway.com/) help counter this, but it'll continue to be a problem as long as using the old library doesn't cause any obvious problems like immediate crashes, screaming in-your-face error messages, etc.