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Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 10:22:23 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Attribute Amendments
From: lester@lsces.uk (Lester Caine)

On 08/06/2020 19:37, Larry Garfield wrote:
> That... is not related?  This is*not*  a documentation tool.  At all.  It's more akin to moving Doctrine Annotations into core (junior version thereof).  It doesn't render docblocks redundant, it renders "using docblocks for custom metaprogramming" redundant, which was always a fugly hack to begin with.
> 
> A type system improvement for "this parameter must be a positive integer less than 50" would be super nice, I agree, but is in no way related to the topic at hand at all.

But at the end of the day, THAT has been the problem all along with 
people insisting on 'strong typing'. Surly the 'topic in hand' SHOULD be 
to address the base level variables and create a base that replaces the 
material that many of us of have used docblocks to provide for years, 
and which most decent IDE's display currently without needing to add 
more work understanding new 'ways'. A variable that may or may not be 
NULL, read only, integer, numeric, string and so on with size and length 
restrictions automatically managed ... the code for which is permanently 
loaded and not being rebuilt every time a different 'version' of a 
variable is loaded. The sort of facility that every database interface 
tries to emulate when interchanging persistent data with a database 
value, and an array of which consistently defines a record as a group of 
variables. Grouping those variables to provide objects which simply 
manages the relations between them.

I suppose the real question is if PHP is a script processor or a 
compiler? If people want a complied program, then use C/C++ direct! 
Leave PHP as a script processor and restore one of the main reasons PHP 
worked so well long ago ... it provided a well managed library of 
scripts for doing the basic jobs that have not changed since day one. I 
seem to recall a recent request for BUILDING such a library? But that is 
exactly what PEAR has provided for years. It's just not well maintained 
these days simply because it requires a hell of a lot of work to 'bring 
it up to date with PHP7.x' as does a lot of the legacy code base :( Yet 
amazingly 99% of that legacy code DOES still run ... just throwing 
errors that may well simply be ignored.

PHP8 is yet another push to make PHP 'more modern' but is it ACTUALLY 
making PHP better or do we have precisely the same problem as Python but 
trying to change things piecemeal rather than just going all in and 
destroying BC and starting again with 'a more current language'?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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