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Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 23:44:03 -0700
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To: Antony Dovgal <tony@daylessday.org>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Short syntax for array literals [...]
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

Antony Dovgal wrote:
> On 28.05.2008 10:25, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> You do understand that you will not be able to use this syntax in 
>>> your products for at least next 5 years without rising min required 
>>> PHP version to the latest one, right?
>>> That makes it even more useless.
>>
>> That's great argument. So nice to know everything we do for 5.3 and 6 
>> is completely useless :)
> 
> No, THAT is really great argument.
> Compare "everything we do" with "backward incompatible syntax that 
> duplicates already existing one, but 5 characters shorter" and find two 
> differences.

At a certain level everything is just syntax.  There is nothing about a 
"for" loop that can't be done with a "while" loop.  All OO code could be 
written procedurally as well.  PHP has always made an effort to match 
the expectations of the typical web developer.  14 years ago the typical 
web developer knew Perl and C, so a lot of syntax was borrowed from 
those two languages.

Then kids started coming out of universities with Java on their brains, 
so PHP adopted a Java-like OO syntax.  Today's web developer is 
typically writing half their app in some variety of Ecmascript, either 
Javascript or Actionscript and this array syntax is second nature to all 
those folks.

We have to be very conservative and pick our spots when it comes to 
evolving the language syntax, but we also can't bunker down and get 
stubborn and expect the world to stand still around us.  If we had taken 
that same position at PHP 2, PHP 3, PHP 4 or even PHP 5 just because a 
handful of developers were content with the current state of things, we 
would be in serious trouble today.

-Rasmus