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Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2019 19:13:52 +0200
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To: "G. P. B." <george.banyard@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [VOTE] Deprecate PHP's short open tags, again
From: nicolas.grekas+php@gmail.com (Nicolas Grekas)

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Le mar. 6 ao=C3=BBt 2019 =C3=A0 13:34, G. P. B. <george.banyard@gmail.com> =
a =C3=A9crit :

> The voting for the "Deprecate short open tags, again" [1] RFC has begun.
> It is expected to last two (2) weeks until 2019-08-20.
>
> A counter argument to this RFC is available at
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/counterargument/deprecate_php_short_tags
>
> Best regards
>
> George P. Banyard
>
> [1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate_php_short_tags_v2



The counter-arguments are a really nice addition to the process.

Reading them made me think there is a big missing "pro" argument: perceived
complexity of the engine.

When there is no choice to make (short tags on/off, magic_quote on/off,
etc), then there is only one thing to teach, one thing to learn, one thing
to (not have to) agree on when deciding for some conventions, etc.

When there are N binary options (and not all options are binary), there are
2^N things to teach, learn, etc.

That's a major cost put on the community. Choices that were made years ago
when PHP was not what it is today were certainly fine, but nowadays, this
imposes significant a burden on everyone. Each option individually are
maybe minor, but the 2^N becomes quickly big. I think we should make such
things way simpler so that we can free the brains of many to do the next
things that matter.

I don't have a vote, but if I were I would vote "yes". Instead, I encourage
"no"-voters to reconsider, and others to vote "yes" too :)

Cheers,
Nicolas

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