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Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 09:47:26 +0100
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To: Adam Jon Richardson <adamjonr@gmail.com>
Cc: Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@php.net>, internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Scalar Type Intentions
From: simonsimcity@googlemail.com (Simon Schick)

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Hi, Adam

I just get the feeling that this is exactly what we're currently discovered
in some other threads in this mailing-list.
We're now getting more and more closer to what we really want and a good
way to write it the PHP-way.

Please try to get a rough overview over the last messages we wrote on the
following threads:
* [PHP-DEV] PHP Philosophy (was RE: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting)
* RE: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting

The second one is quite big ;) and sometimes the messages contain only
religious stuff like "This will never be, go away" - but that's just
because we're in discussion. Like the wind blows. But I think we'll get to
list of rock-solid possible solutions here.

I think we'll soon create a RFC for that and discuss it after we have it
"on one paper".
I would kind-of like the idea to add the *scalar *type in addition just to
avoid objects or arrays in there, but let's look how the discussion goes.

Bye
Simon

2012/3/1 Adam Jon Richardson <adamjonr@gmail.com>

> First, phpunit is a fantastic tool! I'm thankful for your contributions to
> all of the PHP community (especially with the code coverage capabilities.)
>
> I speak to your 2 points inline below:
>
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 9:36 PM, Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@php.net
> >wrote:
>
> > On 02/29/2012 09:01 PM, Adam Jon Richardson wrote:
> >
> >> However, the aliases would allow developers to better communicate
> >> intentions AND provide more information for IDE's and static analyses
> >> tools.
> >>
> >
> >  1) You are trying to solve a social problem through technology. That
> >    usually does not work.
> >
>
> I believe technology can provide effective tools for social problems,
> although I won't go so far as to say that it usually does work. More
> importantly, I believe programming is riddled with social problems:
>
> "Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs.
> Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to
> do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a
> computer to do."
>
> D. Knuth
>
>  2) What you want to achieve is already possible through docblocks.
>
>
> The greater part of the proposal rests on the general scalar hint. That
> said, I still believe the aliases for the scalars hold value. Sure, the
> communicative aspect of the aliases can be achieved through use of
> docblocks. However, in cognitive psychology and human factors research,
>  proximity of relevant information plays a role in perception and
> processing, and I would posit that code with the type intentions displayed
> closer to the actual body of the function would hold benefits (this would
> be very testable, though, and research could prove me wrong.) When
> available, the scalar aliases could then be used to help auto-generate the
> docblocks.
>
> I would appreciate the scalar hinting, along with the aliases I outlined
> very much in my code. I believe that this form of hinting stays true to the
> PHP principles outlined in Richard's PHP Philosophy thread (a great read),
> and I believe it helps developers who want to better enforce (scalar
> hinting) and communicate (scalar aliases) the intentions of their code.
>
> Thank you for the feedback,
>
> Adam
>

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