You're wrong

I think it is unrealistic to expect that there will be VPS providers providing pre-built PHP packages for all sorts of versions.

var and public are the same thing with a different name. If you did not realize that, you need to study the subject better.

Deprecating var for public was reckoned to be such a bad idea that it was withdrawn.

+1000 to Artur.

Hey 'no time wasters' why don't you stick to windows 98 and windows 2000 even XP or old linux/mac versions to work with because it takes some time to upgrade to a newer OS version and of course you can't waste valuable time?

And I wish PHP was just like Java from the beginning. I won't discuss here what are the benefits of using OOP, I just say that that is evolution. So yes, public and private do matter. You look to me like some old assembly fellows that they were insisting to write their codes to pure assembly and not using OOP langs like C++ because it was 0.0000005 seconds faster!

As of the MySQL 'issue', it wouldn't be a so big deal to upgrate code to work if the coder was experienced enough to write modules so to access the database or to use classes that implement MySQL access and not use the core function directly. I have stopped to access MySQL by using just core functions many jears ago. It is just a bad way for me. And now if I want to upgrade to newer mysqli functions, I just change them to my adapter class and it works for all the project.

It's really offending Microsoft's and others philosophy, that users are fools.

If one removes a file- the MS Windows pop-ups the infamous question -" Are you crazy? Do you really want to delete it?"

( Yahoo Mail allows quietly to remove emails, but when one tries to clean up his 'Spam' folder - the infamous questions appears ! ;))))

How much efforts truly needed to support documentation of discontinued to develop software?
mysqlnd has undoubtedly advantage over mysqli that it is much simpler to learn and use and it is good enough for vast number of tasks.

In my view, it's pure arrogance to 'FORCE' anybody to use this and not that.