Major update, awesome. /s
As someone who manages a network of 250+ WordPress websites - these PHP updates are killing me! As soon as I'm done helping clients upgrade/fix their incompatible themes/plugins and custom code, a new version is out! Even with great tools, the process for about 10% of my network is a nightmare.
While I appreciate the work, it's not very satisfying and for many clients very frustrating to pay for something they know nothing about, just to "keep the lights on".
The plugin/theme developers usually develop with older versions of PHP in mind, lot's of plugins still work even with 5.x versions...
For my WP sites I just stick with "two major versions behind" workflow and I don't encounter many problems.
Am I doing it wrong?
7.4 just ended its security support so you might argue that you should be at least on 8.0 just in case a bug is found and not backported.
Truth is: it's not likely.
But in any case theres no need whatsoever to use the latest version and even less when you are using WordPress which is notoriously bad at keeping up with PHP releases.