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Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 05:24:40 -0400
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To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Generators in PHP
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

>> Just between PHP 5.2 and 5.4 we've gained traits, closures,
>> namespaces, function array derefrencing, access to member upon
>> instantiation, and lots of other lovely additions to the language. I
>> don't see languages like Java or Python evolving this quickly -- by
>> contrast.
>
>
> But now we also need the people who insisted that these were essential
> coming up to the plate and producing good documentation on how they should
> be used properly. As yet they are not adding anything to MY existing code
> base except hassle.
>
> All these 'extras' may seem 'sexy' to some people, but if there is no
> pressing need to use them why would many of us bother? Apart from later
> having to debug some third party library that has been 'sexed up' with the
> latest gismoes and which is almost unreadable due to the shortcuts it uses.
>
> ( I'll start a new thread for my other rant ... )
>

I don't see anything about these particular features that isn't
already documented. Albeit there are parts of the documentation that
could always use a bit of refinement every now and then. With that
said, the manual isn't a place to tell people "how" a particular
feature should be used, but how it "can" be used and to what
consequence. The actual use is left up to the developer and we all
know there is more than one way any given developer likes to implement
things in any language.

In an effort not to devolve this thread into something it's not I'd
like to reposition that towards generators.

In order for PHP features to end up getting implemented and committed
into PHP there's a lot of real estate invovled. For one, you have to
have enough developer interest around the feature to begin with. In
the last 24 hours alone there has been significant activity in this
thread (and over 50 responses total in the last few weeks). Two, you
need the have core developers motivated enough to spend the time in
actually writing up the implementation and getting it shipped. That
involves a lot of other intricate work so someone that isn't focused
or motivated enough isn't going to get very far. This also means more
core developers have to jump in if the feature gets into a release
version where maintenance and bug fixes come into play (after all you
can't test everything until you release it into the wild and get
people to discover new edge cases). Three, it has to prove useful
enough that people could not easily achieve the functionality without
language addition. Otherwise it eventually becomes tainted and dies
off (take mysql_* as an example).

All the PHP developers I've spoken with over the past few weeks that
now about the generators RFC are very excited to see it come to PHP.
Especially those developers that have worked with generators in other
languages and know of its usefulness. As for those who don't know
about it yet -- give them a chance. They may like it (of course some
may not). We're not here to discuss it's popularity, but it's
usefulness and feasibility. It's too early to start debating anything
else.