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Subject: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion (fwd)
From: derick@php.net (Derick Rethans)

Looks like it is time to forward this email from 2006 again:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:57:32 +0200
From: Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Give the Language a Rest motion

I'd like to raise a motion to 'Give the Language a Rest'.

Almost a decade since we started with the 2nd iteration on the syntax (PHP 3),
and 2 more major versions since then, and we're still heatedly debating on
adding new syntactical, core level features.

Is it really necessary?  I'd say in almost all cases the answer's no, and a
bunch of cases where a new feature could be useful does not constitute a good
enough reason to add a syntax level feature.  We might have to account for new
technologies, or maybe new ways of thinking that might arise, but needless to
say, most of the stuff we've been dealing with in recent times doesn't exactly
fall in the category of cutting edge technology.

My motion is to make it much, much more difficult to add new syntax-level
features into PHP.  Consider only features which have significant traction to a
large chunk of our userbase, and not something that could be useful in some
extremely specialized edge cases, usually of PHP being used for non web stuff.

How do we do it?  Unfortunately, I can't come up with a real mechanism to
'enforce' a due process and reasoning for new features.

Instead, please take at least an hour to bounce this idea in the back of your
mind, preferably more.  Make sure you think about the full context, the huge
audience out there, the consequences of  making the learning curve steeper with
every new feature, and the scope of the goodness that those new features bring.
Consider how far we all come and how successful the PHP language is today, in
implementing all sorts of applications most of us would have never even thought
of when we created the language.

Once you're done thinking, decide for yourself.  Does it make sense to be
discussing new language level features every other week?  Or should we, perhaps,
invest more in other fronts, which would be beneficial for a far bigger
audience.  The levels above - extensions to keep with the latest technologies,
foundation classes, etc.  Pretty much, the same direction other mature languages
went to.

To be clear, and to give this motion higher chances of success, I'm not talking
about jump.  PHP can live with jump, almost as well as it could live without it
:)  I'm talking about the general sentiment.

Zeev

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