What are the potential pitfalls of using outdated PHP code, such as the one in the provided forum thread?

Using outdated PHP code can lead to security vulnerabilities, compatibility issues with newer PHP versions, and poor performance. To solve this issue, it is important to update the PHP code to utilize modern best practices and security measures.

// Updated PHP code snippet using PDO for database connection

try {
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    die("Error connecting to database: " . $e->getMessage());
}