Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:106556
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CAJHtznw0eKbBNJo9TnDwZvvbMMFt5mCo=+SpKLw0zYzq9tKWZA@mail.gmail.com>
 <DM5PR07MB3563BE82D7366874935CCDDBF2D00@DM5PR07MB3563.namprd07.prod.outlook.com>
 <CAEPJdunFfMvCX13qJ89bW3GxdD-WYHLfMR66wN-f8cbGSBKMJA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <28f4aa00-7ded-c130-9440-cfdd023d6307@hristov.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2019 12:13:59 +0300
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/60.7.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAEPJdunFfMvCX13qJ89bW3GxdD-WYHLfMR66wN-f8cbGSBKMJA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] P++: FAQ
From: php@hristov.com (Andrey Hristov)

On 12.08.19 г. 12:06 ч., Benjamin Eberlei wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 6:32 AM Andi Gutmans <andigutmans@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I must admit that the first time I read Zeev’s email I got anxious... but
>> it is frustrating that PHP has a WAY better runtime than Python and most
>> other dynamic languages yet is falling out of fashion. It’s strange given
>> how much better it actually runs (really being unbiased here). One reason
>> is security perception (which is BS but perception matters) and the second
>> is arguably some of the historic baggage which makes some folks feel PHP is
>> hard to master without a manual (we have the best manual).
>>
>> So many times I have thought “is it time to just take an axe and simplify
>> it and do a cleanup?”. I actually don’t think we lack many features but
>> rather lots of stuff I would dump like references, array(), global
>> namespace for functions(?), type juggling in areas where we should be
>> stricter, etc... I actually think that having a p++ is risky but it is an
>> opportunity. I think it’s mostly be an opportunity if we’d be careful about
>> feature bloat and try and be really aggressive about removing things and
>> cleaning up. We potentially would get the significant benefits of our
>> runtime but with a cleaner language. Will non-PHP appreciate it? maybe,
>> maybe not... I actually do think there’s value of a different brand just
>> because of the BS perception issues...
>>
> 
> Its extremely hard imho to be in fashion all the time and it takes
> anticipation to get next years fashion right. Or you can just wait to get
> in fashion again with the good things you already have and incrementally
> improve them.
> 
> Nothing a PHP / P++ fork will do changes the fact that PHP is a C-style
> language, and Python gets praise for its easy to read and understand
> syntax. Nothing will change the fact that PHP architecture is primarily
> shared nothing, and the current hype is "shared everything" with Node.js
> (yes i know about Swoole et al). But why bother? A language can't be
> everything.

This is the old hype. The new hype is shared nothing, as per lambdas. 
Next time you hit a lambda you don't know whether it will be the same 
instance. Also, Node.js can't show it's superiority with lambdas, as the 
runtime environment takes the work of Node. Also paying per wall clock 
CPU not by cycles it doesn't matter if you use async a lot, as long as 
you are not syndicating. This way lambda is again the old style 
serialized programming where Python and PHP excel.

But this is just my view why PHP will beat JS in the serverless era (it 
just needs a little more love to be well supported).

Cheers,
Andrey