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In-Reply-To: <5d9f729b.1c69fb81.c7438.aa03SMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2019 13:11:58 -0700
Message-ID: <CAMPTd_BXM1Tc1ZtL=-xwUm+5xki9wVbh2MBatwoh33Ye+Xsn+w@mail.gmail.com>
To: Mark Randall <marandall@php.net>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="00000000000005db5205949404a3"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Internals "camps"
From: walterp@gmail.com (Walter Parker)

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On Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 11:04 AM Mark Randall <marandall@php.net> wrote:

> On 10/10/2019 18:30, Walter Parker wrote:
> > "Ferry" projects might be: more/better training on PHP, better
> > documentation so that the backtick is no longer an "obscure" feature to
> > those that don't have a shell/Unix/Perl background, tooling to warn
> people
> > when they misuse this feature.
>
> Unfortunately most of those are out of our hands.
>
> While it would certainly be great if we could better educate everyone,
> such things are beyond the power of internals to do, and while we could
> improve the documentation, we're not in a position to tell everyone that
> new information is there, and even still, that wouldn't change that it's
> too easy to miss for the power it possesses.
>
> While a warning would be something, PHP's warnings don't actually
> prevent anything. By the time you see them, the problem has usually
> already occurred.
>
> That leaves us with the choice that's within our power, deprecation and
> eventual removal of backticks in favour of something that's much more
> obvious in its intent and much less easy to miss.
>
> Mark Randall
>
>
So what I read here is that we need to undergo the costs of removing
backticks to make up for the problem that people have stopped widely using
them and the fact that too many programmers have stopped reading the
manual. This appears to similar to the deletionist campaigns on WIkiPedia
(where people delete pages if the subject isn't famous enough). I've found
those distasteful.

Could we first do some research to figure out if this actually a
significant issue or if it is minor annoyance? I think that is one of the
problems here. One group thinks this is a major issue that should be
addressed now, the other thinks that it isn't a problem and hasn't seen any
justification that rises about the level of opinion of few people.


Walter




-- 
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of
zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.   -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

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