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Subject: Next major version must be 7 (Lessons learned from the ECMAScript
 committee)
From: webmaster@keryx.se (Keryx Web)

Hi again

Trying to drive home this message I am starting a new thread.

Mini-summary: The next *major* edition of PHP must be 7, not 6.

Summary:

A. There seem to be universal agreement that the up until last week 
branch of PHP called trunk was going to be PHP 6 is a dead end and not 
the way into the future. (I'll call this "PHP 6.old" from now on.

B. Instead a more incremental approach is better, according to the 
consensus. (I'll call this "PHP.next".)

C. BUT: There is a ton of articles and slides and blog posts describing 
PHP 6.old on the net already.

D. If there will be a new major edition of PHP with the version number 
6, not based on "PHP 6.old" but "PHP.next" it will take a huge amount of 
time for the old resources to disappear from Google search results and 
peoples minds.

E (for ergo): The next major version of PHP must be called 7, to avoid 
confusion. Could we not at least agree on this?

This is not a technical decision. It is a pedagogic decision.

It is not a decision about if we are going from 5.3 to 7 directly or if 
there should be a 5.4 release in between. Nor is it a decision about 
timetable or features.

(And it is an appropriate slap to publishers who have put out books with 
PHP 6 in their title, just for marketing purposes.)

OK?


You may stop reading now because I've made my point. Here comes a little 
fairy tale illustrating it further.

A fairy tale from real life.

Once upon a time there was a proposal for ECMAScript 4. Then along came 
Douglas Crockford and said "this is bad". Then Microsoft said "we concur".

And Mozilla and Adobe said: "You are letting us down. You had promised 
to support ECMAScript 4 and you have a hidden agenda."

And there was some name calling.

And people were pissed.

But then they talked to each other, and reached an agreement. There 
should be ES 3.1 first and ES 4 later.

But they interpreted the agreement differently. Which made people pissed 
again.

And work continued on the two branches, which were now incompatible with 
each other.

But then they talked to each other again, and reached an agreement - again.

And - poff - ECMAScript 4 was gone.

And ECMAScript 3.1 became "fifth edition", because changes were to large 
for a point release.

And the future became "Harmony", which might become 6th edition, once 
it's done.

And everybody is happy :-)

To make my point absolutely clear, this is the analogy:

ES 4   = PHP 6.old
ES 3.1 = PHP 5.4
ES 5   = PHP 7

And for those who have missed it, here is the story retold by Brendan Eich:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=eich-yuiconf2009-harmony

And retold by Doug C:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-yuiconf2009-state


-- 
Keryx Web (Lars Gunther)
http://keryx.se/
http://twitter.com/itpastorn/
http://itpastorn.blogspot.com/