PHP 7 Released

The PHP development team announces the release of PHP 7.0.0. It comes with a new version of the Zend Engine, numerous improvements and new features.

Why PHP 7.0 and not PHP 6.0?

Andi Gutmans co-create PHP and co-founded Zend Technologies said “We’re going to skip version 6 because years ago, we had plans for a 6 but those plans were very different from what we’re doing now,” so the name PHP 7 was chosen.

So what makes PHP 7 so special? What does this mean for you as a developer?

• Improved performance: PHP 7 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6
• Significantly reduced memory usage
• Abstract Syntax Tree
• Consistent 64-bit support
• Improved Exception hierarchy
• Many fatal errors converted to Exceptions
• Secure random number generator
• Removed old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions
• The null coalescing operator (??)
• Return and Scalar Type Declarations
• Anonymous Classes
• Zero cost asserts

Lots of improved features are waiting for you, why not start playing with PHP7.