Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:106638 Return-Path: Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 86856 invoked from network); 16 Aug 2019 20:09:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost.localdomain) (76.75.200.58) by pb1.pair.com with SMTP; 16 Aug 2019 20:09:17 -0000 To: internals@lists.php.net References: <6534c240-e721-d5c1-a98c-86dfb9189b00@gmx.de> <5d56d50a.1c69fb81.26bc6.e2cdSMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 18:38:28 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-GB Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Posted-By: 94.4.34.143 Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Vote: Straw poll for P++ feasibility From: markyr@gmail.com (Mark Randall) Message-ID: On 16/08/2019 17:40, Chase Peeler wrote > A BC break to clean up the language might be justified in one case, and not > in another. To make a blanket statement that we will or will not attempt to > clean up the language is not wise in my opinion. It puts the project in a > bad place if it's forced to stick to it's decision, or, it makes the whole > reason for having made a decision pointless if we keep finding certain > items that are exceptions. Re: Entertainment, I'd liken it to something like watching the replay of a car crash. One really shouldn't, but one can't help but be mesmerised. Onto the matter of nuance in decisions, I agree that things should be done on a case-by-case basis, however, you have to have something to weigh the pros and cons against. Right now, so far as I can tell, the value of cleanup and improvement in any particular decision is undefined, because there's no general consensus on it. Take short open tags, there are cases made for and against, and in my opinion the strongest case for it is language cleanup, to have one fixed way of doing something that can be taught so future developers don't start wondering what the difference is between them. But what base weight does cleanup have? Is cleanup hugely important, or a complete non-factor that shouldn't be considered at all? If it's somewhere in between, where in between. It would never be used in absolute terms, it's always something that would strengthen or weaken other arguments. BC breaking cleanup for cleanups sake isn't really going to fly, but cleanup because a particular set of functions are inconsistent, or exhibit unintuitive behaviour, those ultimately all have to start with a consensus on if it's worth breaking something, or making something more complex (namespaced function aliases?) for the sake of making the language as a whole "better". My worry is that those with voting privileges on internals may end up splitting into two camps, and voting ideas up or down based on personal bias towards or against an underlying principle of clean-up and improvement or BC-supreme. I doubt it will come up _often_, but when it does, it seems to be incredibly disruptive. I would argue it needs a wider debate and then people should use the result of that debate to inform their voting, knowing that "PHP" has agreed to weigh certain general concepts in a particular way. Mark Randall