Code can become deprecated and even outdated after enough time passes without upgrading your codebase, causing your web application to perform poorly or even stop working altogether.

Deprecation is the first sign of outdated code, which often manifests as errors and warnings in your server logs. It is caused by newer versions of the affected language being released that plan to drop certain language references, due to better linguistics options being developed. It will not occur on servers that persist using the older versoin of the language, which is associated with the development date of your codebase. For example, the PHP language used "mysql" to refer to the database in versions earlier than 5.5 of the PHP language, but this became deprecated in version 5.5 and 5.6 of PHP and outdated in version 8. A codebase using the old mysql references running on a server that was upgraded to 5.5 or 5.6 woud generate log error warnings. If that same server were to be upgraded to PHP version 8 or higher, the codebase would simply break!

Code Reviews are an appropriate first step to deciding whether a codebase is deprecated and/or outdated. Some simple searches through the codebase, and evaluating the current log files for errors can reveal the state of deprecation and usually points to files and line numbers causing problems.

A Plan of Attack is a good second step when upgrading a codebase. Your web application may be in productoin with traffic loads. The goal is to modernize your codebase with minimal customer disruption or down time. Strategizing includes debugging and reviewing the upgraded web application on a demo server, perhaps with a demo copy of the database. Studying traffic load patterns can identfy the best day and time to swap the codebases. This is a discussoin best had with key stakeholders before any actions are executed.

Security Code Reviews are healthy to include, if an upgrade is planned. There may be newer features for securing data that were released with current versoins of the language. Or, security may not have been a primary focus during the original development of your web application. Code security is sometimes neglected as low priority, but becomes a high priority after the first exploitation is detected.

If you have any doubt about your codebase being deprecated or outdated, call us at 801-801-8059 or use our Contact Us Form or send us an email to to get a free consultation.