"It felt like it was cutting edge. But years later, 7.1 was also outdated. The application had a bug, and the immediate suggestion was to use a modern version of PHP to avoid this non-sense. But being stubborn, I dug deeper and found that the function I was using that was deprecated in newer versions, had an alternative since PHP 5.3. A quick fix prevented months of work rewriting our application. The word "modern" doesn't mean what we think it means."
"Modern encryption algorithms are secure. Modern banking is safe. Modern frameworks are robust. Modern infrastructure is reliable. We read statements like this every day in tech blogs, marketing copy, and casual Slack conversations. But if we pause for just a second, we realize they are utterly meaningless. The word "modern" is a temporal label, not a quality certificate. It tells us when something was made, not how well it was made."
Many developers reflexively propose upgrading to 'modern' versions, tools, or algorithms as catch-all solutions for bugs and limitations. Temporal labels like 'modern' indicate when something was created or popularized, not its inherent quality or longevity. Technologies once hailed as modern—MD5, Flash, Internet Explorer 6, the Ford Pinto—later revealed serious flaws. Newness can create a false sense of security and progress. Practical debugging sometimes requires investigating legacy alternatives or overlooked fixes rather than wholesale rewrites. Critical evaluation of tools based on suitability, history, and specific problem context yields better outcomes than defaulting to 'modern' choices.
Read at Ibrahim Diallo Blog
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