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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] rename T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM to T_DOUBLE_COLON
From: admin@codeangel.org (Chad Emrys)

On 10/30/2010 12:44 PM, Jack Timmons wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Chad Emrys<admin@codeangel.org>  wrote:
>    
>>   I just know the bigger culture of those who use PHP, and some of them are
>> quite annoyed by the dismissive nature of the maintainers who are quite at
>> odds to what the majority of the community want or needs.
>>      
> As one of those people who "use PHP", after the first time googling
> it, I haven't needed it. It's one of those things about the language
> that's interesting.
>
> If you're going to complain about how someone has to learn something
> about another culture, why not take a step back and consider those
> throughout the world whose native language is something other than
> English have to try to translate what it does.
>
> Also, as one who also answers other's questions (although not IRC,
> because its my experience most people asking questions on there are
> dbags), I find that complaints regarding PHP's ambiguity in naming
> conventions and variable order (which is slowly being fixed, and is
> greatly appreciated) far, far outnumber the complaints regarding
> T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM. Actually, I never hear complaints about
> T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM, just questions about what it is by people
> who'd rather be told than find out for themselves. And, when they find
> out, the answer is usually something like "Oh, neat."
>
> And, what sort of cooperation do you expect to get when your first
> line is "WTF is T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM?". That's akin to finding
> multiple languages on your tax forms and exclaiming "WTF is this doing
> here!?"
>
>    
I'm not arguing about learning another culture. The argument is that an 
error message that should be straight forward, isn't.

I wouldn't be here if the error message was something like:  unexpected 
T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM on line 23 (PAAMAYIM NEKUDOTAYIM is hebrew for 
double colon because a lot of great Israelites helped make what PHP is 
today)  :p

Also that first line is just a sample of what I got to deal with on a 
day to day basis.