I typically use === or hash_equals() depending on the use case ;) Magic quotes needed to die. There are also a lot of other improvements in the past few years

I typically use === or hash_equals() depending on the use case ;) Magic quotes needed to die. There are also a lot of other improvements in the past few years that I've grown to appreciate. MD5/SHA1 password hashing need(ed/s) to die; password_hash() and password_verify() needed to become a thing. Register globals needed to die. There are still some changes that I believe are necessary to clean up the rest of the ecosystem. MCRYPT_RAND needs to die. Devs choosing MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256 thinking it's AES with a 256 bit key rather than a non-AES flavor of Rijndael still needs to die. Composer's unverified curl | php needs to die.