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Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:53:00 +0100
Message-ID: <CAG9XoMTezATGFpkEqSw7+6pqCnVzU6Jc2f7GA7wUeUD0rpdkCQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Kokot <peterkokot@gmail.com>, Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Deprecation ideas for PHP 8
From: benjamin.morel@gmail.com (Benjamin Morel)

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Please forgive my stubborness, too. I fail to see how WordPress supporting
PHP versions that have been EOL for YEARS can be of any help to the
community? These versions may have unpatched security holes, and
encouraging users to keep using them is a disfavour to the community IMO,
which can only delay adoption of newer versions, and lead to an even more
painful upgrade path when you have to upgrade N versions at once. My stance
on this is that projects written in PHP have to evolve together with the
language, and I'm personally not surprised to have to rewrite a few things
whenever a major PHP version is released (and I do maintain quite a number
of projects). Let me rephrase this: actually, I would be HAPPY to rewrite
my projects towards a more consistent PHP language.

That being said, I know this opinion is a minority on this list, so let's
put it aside for a moment.

Now what prevents PHP from adding consistent function names / APIs, and
deprecating the older ones? We can keep the old ones for 10 more years if
you wish, but at least new PHP code can start using the "correct" ones, and
progressively the share of PHP code out there using the old ones should
progressively get lower over the years, up to the point where we could
eventually decide that it's not worth keeping them. The thing is, if you
never start, the situation will never improve.

You know the proverb: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The
second best time is now.

Ben

On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 at 11:30, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 at 07:34, Peter Kokot <peterkokot@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Sorry, I didn't put my words correctly here. Not inconsistency.
> > Inconsistency is a fact, yes. I've meant the incapability of doing
> > something to fix this inconsistency. And it is becoming some sort of
> > stubborn belief and less and less people want to fix it.
> >
> > The RFC: Consistent function names [1] shows the magnitude of this. I
> > don't think every function listed there needs a change so it can be
> > greatly reduced. But still this can be done in several years to 10
> > years or so (measuring over the thumb).
> >
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm sorry if I sound stubborn, but I have yet to see a reasonable answer to
> the fundamental problem: the effort needed is not on the part of a few
> volunteers changing the language, it is effort by *every single user of the
> language*, rewriting *every single PHP program ever written*.
>
> WordPress officially supports both PHP 5.2, released 13 years ago, and PHP
> 7.3, released a couple of months ago; one of their biggest challenges in
> raising that bar is that they, too, have to persuade a community (the theme
> and plugin authors) to change their code to match. That should give you
> some idea of how long old and new names would have to exist side by side,
> while we waited for everyone to rewrite all their code, and meanwhile, the
> language would be *even more inconsistent*, because there would be extra
> ways of writing the same thing.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Rowan Collins
> [IMSoP]
>

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