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Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:54:54 +0200
Message-ID: <CAKZjf5SWZv+iE8AmjGmZhZr-6=YhO4TAFMQXg6uvA63eSeXHmg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: Ferenc Kovacs <tyra3l@gmail.com>, Sherif Ramadan <theanomaly.is@gmail.com>, internals@lists.php.net
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Generators in PHP
From: alex.aulbach@gmail.com (Alex Aulbach)

2012/7/25 Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>:
> Experience can be helpful. But you must support things with facts

Ok, I tried to bring all the pro arguments together.

Suggestion:

For a generator, rename the keyword "function" to ... "generator" or
something like that. Example:
   generator hugo()
   {
     yield ...
   }

Fact: yield/generators is more or less complicated, this shouldn't be
changed - it's a proven concept.
Fact: yield makes functions some kind of "different".
Fact: It doesn't matter how much difference and if PHP has already
"different" behaving functions. We're talking about now.
Fact: It doesn't matter how it is implemented in other languages,
because we talk about PHP and not other languages.
Fact: This is also good style in general: Call the things what they are.
Fact: as PHP-developer we must try to avoid making things more
complicated, because this is one of the best features of PHP.
Fact: it's easy to implement a new keyword  into PHP for that case

Experience: Most PHP programmers will have problems to understand
generators because it is a function that generates an iterator...
something magic <eyesroll> they never heard of before.
Experience: generators/yield can't be explained on one page. Much
programmers will never ever read so much docs. :)
Experience: good features are self-explaining. A function which
returns an iterator because of a simple word in it's body is not.
Experience: They will make stupid mistakes, because they mix yield
function with normal functions.
Experience: They will make stupid mistakes, because they will look for
"return" instead for "yield".
Experience: again, yield is more or less complicated, it's in this
case not a good idea to cover complexity by using already existing
language constructs.
Experience: Not using the same name will remove a little bit pressure
from "busy" programmers
Experience: It's of course their fault, if the don't learn how to use
something. But this is against the concepts of PHP. This means: If we
have the chance to make things easier we must do it.
Experience: The current concept dosn't "feel right" for me. I like to
listen to my belly in those questions, because he is in most cases
right. With the change I suggested he stops grumbling.

Please correct me if I use arguments I thought they have been
generally agreed/some of them are new.

-
Alex Aulbach