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Thread-Topic: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion (fwd)
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion (fwd)
From: andi@zend.com (Andi Gutmans)

What I am saying is if we accepted even 50% of what people felt very passio=
nate about because their "favorite language of the day" has it then PHP wou=
ld become overly complex, bloated and very challenging for users to pick up=
. C++ for example was a good language but is a good example of trying to do=
 too much and getting overly complex over time (at least in my opinion).

I do think we should have new feature discussions and need to ensure PHP ev=
olves with the market and its users but have to ensure that we still keep i=
t simple, easy to adopt and maintainable. Also, I think we do not need 100 =
ways of doing the same thing. Choice is good but too much choice is not.=20

As I said in my previous email, while I think there are areas we can and sh=
ould innovate in and evolve the core language I believe a lot of the innova=
tion also has to happen at the framework and extension-level. I do not thin=
k there's a resource issue at the language level. When a new feature does g=
et slated to be included we always have plenty of resources deployed on it =
to harden it and make sure it gets into the core vm in the right way (it is=
 almost never the same as the original patch).

I do think having more people work on extensions for some of the up and com=
ing technologies would be super valuable. Seems like everyone wants to try =
and get their favorite language feature in but less are stepping up to work=
 on extensions. What can you contribute?

Andi

From: dukeofgaming [mailto:dukeofgaming@gmail.com]=20
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 7:36 PM
To: Andi Gutmans
Cc: Pierre Joye; Derick Rethans; PHP Developers Mailing List
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion (fwd)

Hi,

I think that -in any context- the "if it aint broke don't fix it" is a very=
 depressing attitude to have, and a very wrong one in any open source commu=
nity.

If the signal to noise ratio is the problem, I think its better to focus on=
 that problem, not shutting down the signal. If PHP is a resource crunched =
project, I think its better to focus on that problem, not rejecting feature=
 requests.

(I might appear as impertinent with what I'm going to say, but bear with me=
, I'm being well-intentioned and mean no offense; just want to be honest).

Regarding the signal to noise ratio, I have one question: how did traits ge=
t accepted?, having seen the kind of conversations in the lists it makes al=
most no sense to me how something so "radical" and complex could make its w=
ay to PHP so quickly and a simple and convenient thing like a short array s=
yntax cannot, and something so basic as annotations raises so much pointles=
s (just not to say ignorant) debate. Was it the to-the-point RFC and solid =
patch?, was it that the conversations were just on another level so not any=
one could just say -or troll- "traits are no solution! *spit*, lets do aspe=
cts instead!". I know it took some time, but while lurking the lists IIRC I=
 never saw any opposition to traits... could anyone tell me what was the ma=
gic behind this?, could it be repeated?.

Regarding resources, I think this is one of the main things rendering the c=
ommunity unhealthy (at least it feels like that to me) and I even feel bitt=
erness in the air. I think that the definite solution to this is a DVCS lik=
e git and hosting the code at github, or like mercurial and hosting the cod=
e at bitbucket, please don't be angered at this suggestion (as I know the s=
witch to SVN is a fairly recent one), you can ask around SVN geeks that wen=
t the distributed way and they will tell you things, wonderful things of ho=
w they don't know how could they could endure that much with that in their =
project, and if its an open source one, how much the switch has done in fav=
or of contributions.

Regardless of everything, I like that the PHP community has so much passion=
 and energy, sometimes in a not constructive way, but that is a good proble=
m to have in my opinion, really, don't take it for granted, it just needs a=
 little direction.
Best regards,

David Vega

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com> wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Pierre Joye [mailto:pierre.php@gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 2:33 AM
>To: Andi Gutmans
>Cc: Derick Rethans; PHP Developers Mailing List
>Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion (fwd)
>
>On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:02 AM, Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com> wrote:
>
>> Hence my suggestion to bundle MongoDB extension and possibly work on
>additional extensions. Some of my suggestions probably rightfully didn't g=
et
>much interest such as Thrift.
>
>See my comment in your other thread and below.
>
>> Maybe we should consider making a list of extensions we think could be
>beneficial and the new mentorship program can actually help deliver some o=
f
>them?
>
>I do not thnk it is a good thing to begin a discussion about this exact to=
pic and
>then totally ignore it.
>
I think it got lost in the very long and varying discussions. Will dig up a=
nd take a look. I had a couple of hectic weeks.

>I also think that it is somehow wrong to post something asking to do not p=
ropose
>new things when we finally have more people involved in proposals and
>discussions. Maybe that's just me me but I do think that the main problem =
we
>have (besides the ones we identified and try to fix right now) is the comp=
lete
>lack of open discussions about possible new features, in this list with ne=
w or
>existing contributors.
I did not say we should not propose or have discussions (I am in favor of a=
dding [] for arrays for example). But I am saying the bias should be not to=
 include new language functionality unless it has very broad appeal & serio=
us upside impact. The bias should be against feature creep.

Andi

>
>--
>Pierre
>
>@pierrejoye | http://blog.thepimp.net | http://www.libgd.org

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