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Subject: Re: backslash, really ... ?
From: greg@chiaraquartet.net (Greg Beaver)

On 4/28/10 4:45 PM, Sylvain Rabot wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The comment I'm about to make is behind the times, and, now, useless, I
> know, but I can't hold me.
> 
> You chose for the namespace feature, a great feature besides, the
> backslash ?? really ?? Come on guys, among all the possibilities, you
> have chosen, according to me, the most hideous character possible.
> 
> Having Windows©®™ path like strings in the middle of source code is not
> something that is going to make me use the feature.
> 
> PHP syntax was simple, clean. To me, the backslash token ruins
> everything. Using it aside from escaping was something I have never
> considered, have you ? Do you like it ?
> 
> The goal of backslash was maybe to highlight namespace in the source
> code, if it was, congrats, we only see that now.
> To my opinion it breaks all esthetic's balance of a source code.
> 
> No need to respond that I should have contribute to the choice, believe
> me, if I could have, I would have.
> 
> This was just the comment of a simple guy which is very concerned about
> source code esthetic's and believes that a neat, well balanced code is
> more likely to be well maintained that any other one.

You probably haven't tried using it much yet.  The primary annoyances
I've found with namespaces are:

1) forgetting to \Prefix internal class names like Iterator
2) people who complain about the namespace separator because it's cool
to do so with zero understanding of the technical challenges or the
aesthetic (yes, aesthetic) wrangling that went into the choice

Otherwise, it works (no small achievement: namespaces + PHP + autoload
is a nightmare to do properly, you should thank Dmitry and Stas for
their hard work as well as the countless pre-iterations that inspired
the final version), with no unexpected name resolution problems or
performance issues.

As a reminder, in programming aesthetics = the elegance, performance and
robustness of a problem's solution.  If you're caught up on whether your
code has the exact right kind of visual look (beyond an enforced coding
standard), perhaps you could benefit from a good old-fashioned traffic
spike to your site to correct the impulse. :)

Regards,
Greg