Let's talk about our PHP support schedule
With the merging of PHP 7.4 into our docker container earlier today, it got @Adam Charron and I to talking about our product's own PHP support.
For those not in the know, we currently support PHP right up until that version is no longer supported itself. This is for some good reason. Most servers don't update major software every year. There needs to be a buffer of support. Our operations team is on a two year cycle, for example.
This also means that we are currently on PHP 7.2. That's two versions behind current PHP. It will be three years passed release by the time we sunset support. That's a lot of time. With that wait we miss out on incremental improvements to our productivity and software quality that are essentially "free" to us.
What I think we should do this year is jump to PHP 7.4 support rather than moving to PHP 7.3. That will be the same amount of effort for ops since they are upgrading to PHP 7.4 anyway.
After that, we wouldn't be upgrading to PHP 8.0 in its release year and are likely again to jump to PHP 8.1 the following year instead. So two versions every two years instead of one version every year. Not super different.