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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] my take on PHP 6, part 2
From: ralph@ralphschindler.com (Ralph Schindler)


> And I want to remind about my typical opinion: We should try to require
> as little extensions as possible and do as many things as possible (in a
> usable way) in userland. If we spend time on making PHP faster we reduce
> the need for extensions even more.

You're assuming the target implementation is trivial, or even possible. 
  In non-trivial libraries/implementations, you'll find developers chose 
to write their library in c/c++ b/c c and c++ are portable.

Off the top of my head, an example of this would be mapnik.  Currently, 
no good extension wrapping libmapnik exists, nor is there any spec to 
follow that would allow a php developer to replicate the usefulness of 
that library in userland php.  Moreover, if someone were to be able to 
create a userland/1-1 implementation of it, they'd be hard pressed to 
keep up with that projects momentum in improving the baseline 
implementation in c++.

Another example is the AOP project.  Without an extension hijacking the 
executor, this kind of extension is not possible in userland in any 
meaningful (1st class) kind of way.

I could probably come up with a few more examples, but I think those 
suffice.

More to the point though- having the ability to expose portable 
libraries to PHP though extensions underscores the "glue" aspect of 
PHP's usefulness, it would be beneficial (IMO) to expand this usefulness 
to developers.


-ralph