Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:110752
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <CAFPFaMLAt_p52-ZWL5VAJENgQ-KznYHPidLaC3HaU3n338thTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <5ef71806.1c69fb81.4111d.f75aSMTPIN_ADDED_MISSING@mx.google.com> <CAEPJdukr78wGvCBt0zXPjLciB7h8j9SVQc7fhVmFywynnfqbAg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAEPJdukr78wGvCBt0zXPjLciB7h8j9SVQc7fhVmFywynnfqbAg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2020 20:40:19 +0100
Message-ID: <CA+kxMuQNBSmcwWBBAWKncgk2zLJqcV43G3skc8XrL_zBBdTUWg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de>
Cc: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV][RFC][VOTE] Rename T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM to T_DOUBLE_COLON
From: Danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 at 11:20, Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de> wrote:

> 1. The token name has historic value and should be preserved as such

I don't think it has historic value. It might have nostalgic value but
nostalgia for:

> I think everyone hits it once or twice, has the "wtf?" moment, googles, and
> never forgets it again - even if they can't pronounce it...

is not a great piece of nostalgia.

But regardless of the past value, it's the current and future
trade-offs we should be considering.

i.e. is the cost of changing it bigger or smaller than the benefit of
not having a token name that can only be reasoned about after
googling.

I haven't seen anyone say any cost for changing it. Even if the work
is done to improve the error messages, avoiding having a token that
you can't grok the meaning from the name of it, is a small
improvement.

So the tradeoff appears to be very small or zero cost, versus a
benefit for everyone who hasn't already stumbled into it as a blocker
for their understanding of internals.

cheers
Dan
Ack