In July 2004, PHP 5.0 was released. This version introduced a suite of radical enhancements. Perhaps first among these was radically improved support for object-oriented programming. This stimulated much interest in objects and design within the PHP community. In fact, this was an intensification of a process that began when version 4 first made object-oriented programming with PHP a serious reality.
In this chapter, I look at some of the needs that coding with objects can address. I very briefly summarize some aspects of the evolution of patterns and related practices.