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Subject: Re: Was Reflection annotations reader - We Need A Vision
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

> Sure. Here you go. Here are two examples:
> 
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

This is a nice text, but practical meaning of it is kind of unclear.
Even then, applying it to what we have now with annotations, I can see
they violate at least #1, #2, #3, #5 and #7 :) And possibly #17 too :)
Now, I'm not saying we need to accept exactly such rules, and I see how
you may disagree with my application of it - but that's exactly my
point. I do not see how having something like this would improve what
you want to improve.
Perl one is more practical, but it is a statement of opinion - even
though very influential one of a very smart man. Would you be willing to
accept such statement if it says something that you personally disagree
with? And out of many different opinion, how we choose one that deserves
to be "official", making all other ones "officially wrong"?

> Not so minor correction: *It's about what is a good fit for PHP and what
> is not* should be *It's about what I believe is a good fit for PHP and

You really need an explicit note that I express my opinion? Of course
it's mine, whose else opinion could I express?

> what is not*. You are not a BDFL. And we don't have a unified vision

Neither are you. Yet I am not telling people to shut up, and you are.
Curious.

> that we can measure things against. Therefore, there is no such thing as
> a "good fit for PHP" outside our own personal opinions. It may seem like

I believe there is. Each language has a philosophy and internal
coherence, or at least it should strive to have it. In fact, PHP is
frequently criticized for being lacking on this front, and we do not
have anything written down formally, but I think it still exists.
Moreover, if it does not, and PHP is nothing but a hodgepodge of
somewhat useful tools without any coherent thought and system behind
them - it would be very bad for PHP project. And if it does exist, then
there are things which align with it, and there are things which do not.

> I'm not saying not to express that you think the direction is wrong.
> What I'm saying is to express it in a better way than "PHP is not Java"
> and "I don't ever want to see this". Those are terminal statements.

I made kilobytes if not megabytes of comments on this topic for the past
years. So if you try to latch on one phrase which was a part of bigger
response and make it sound as if I never explained what I mean and
nobody else did the same, repeatedly, over the years - this is just
wrong. I did explain and I keep explaining it. You may not agree but
please do not make it sound as if I only actually said what I mean
instead of droning on with "PHP is not Java", maybe then you could
understand it... I said it many times - the syntax proposed is very
complex and hardly comprehensible, it creates a separate sub-language
inside PHP incompatible with what the rest of PHP is doing, it is not
readable and it is helpful only in very small subset of PHP uses. I am
not opposed to the idea in general, but I am opposed to the level of
complexity - both syntactical and conceptual - it currently involves.

> Instead, if you said "This feature seems to me to be overly complex, and
> that the implementation gains nothing for that complexity", then people
> may learn your point of view. And they may be able to show you the

I said this many times. People just dismiss it saying "baloney, my ORM
needs exactly this level of complexity, and you just don't know first
thing about what real men do with real code". And then come back with
even more complex design.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227