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Cc: George Schlossnagle <george@omniti.com>,
	internals@lists.php.net
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 17:54:34 -0500
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Terje_Sletteb=F8?= <tslettebo@broadpark.no>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 5.1
From: george@omniti.com (George Schlossnagle)


On Feb 3, 2005, at 5:51 PM, Terje Sletteb=F8 wrote:

>> From: "George Schlossnagle" <george@omniti.com>
>
> By the way, I have your book ("Advanced PHP Programming"), which I=20
> found
> very good. :) I've also recently got Andi Gutmans, Stig S. Bakken and=20=

> Derick
> Rethans book, "PHP 5 Power Programming", which, from what I've seen of=20=

> it,
> also looks very good, and I'm looking forward to reading it.


Thanks.  I've heard good things about Andi, Stig and Derick's book as=20
well.

>
>> On Feb 3, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Terje Sletteb=F8 wrote:
>>> Hm, I'm surprised by this response from someone who's name I=20
>>> recognise
>>> as an
>>> active PHP contributor. The answer strikes me as either arrogant=20
>>> and/or
>>> ignorant (note: I'm not saying you are that, but that's how the =
reply
>>> comes
>>> across, given what what operator overloading is about). As I've
>>> pointed out
>>> in other postings in this thread, operator overloading is about much
>>> more
>>> than "just" "syntactic sugar". In C++, for example, it enables
>>> important
>>> things such as function objects (being able to pass an object to a
>>> function,
>>> for example, and have it behave as a function, enabling functional
>>> programming, as well). This is not possible (possibly without =
jumping
>>> through major hoops) in PHP.
>
>> That's because functions are not first-class objects in PHP.  You can
>> do this same thing in straight C without operator overloading.  While
>> I'm happy (for you) that you like operator overloading, the view that
>> it is inherently evil and leads to obtuse, magical code is not
>> relegated to us PHP luddites.  These ideas have all been discussed in
>> depth long before you appeared on the scene to decry our lack of
>> interest in 'evolving' the language to your liking.
>
> Yes, I know that operator overloading, as well as statically
> typed/dynamically typed, type checking, etc. are hotly debated topics,=20=

> and
> that can be healthy, at least as long as there are reasonable=20
> arguments for
> either side. What I decried wasn't this thing in particular, and I'm
> relatively new to the PHP online community, but from the responses I=20=

> got,
> felt something of a complacency ("The language is good enough as it=20
> is. Who
> needs advanced features. They may be misused. Etc."), and I guess I=20
> reacted
> to that, because I find it rather different in the C++ mailing lists=20=

> and
> newsgroups, where there's often lively discussions about the evolution=20=

> of
> the language.

The real problem is that there's a constant influx of (usually)=20
well-meaning people like yourself who come to the lists to propose=20
ideas which have been discussed in depth numerous times before and=20
which have been discarded (for better or worse, my personal opinion is=20=

for better in this case).  'Prone to misuse' and 'tends to result in=20
unmaintainable code' are (in my exposure) two pretty common reasons=20
that people dislike operator overloading.

At any rate, it's been discussed before and shelved, long before you=20
came on the scene.  Even though the topic is new for you in this venue,=20=

it's old for many other people, and it gets annoying to rehash the same=20=

topics every couple months when someone new joins the list.  The=20
discussions are all in the archives though, if you want to see the=20
less-reactionary roots of the rejections.

George=