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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Return Type Declarations pre-vote follow-up
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On 05/09/2014 05:03 PM, Stas Malyshev wrote:
> Hi!
>
>> Our view is that this code was *already* wrong. The type annotations
>> don't make it more or less wrong. What they do let you do is enforce,
> Of course it is wrong. The whole point of having strict typing is to
> catch wrong code. If everybody would write only right code, we wouldn't
> need any type checks - everything would be ok anyway (not correct for
> some compiled languages as there types also tell the compiler how to
> convert values to bits, but true for languages like PHP).
>
>> once the annotation is in place, that it's correct moving forward for
>> the places that are annotated. (And if you want to go fix up and
> The whole point is that it won't be correct. In your model, when you use
> typed function, essentially you know nothing about its return type, as
> somebody could have overridden it with function returning anything. So
> the only thing typing is useful for in your model is to document our
> wishes about types. We already have that with @returns.

I'm inclined to agree with Stas and and Levi here.  If we want 
return-type-suggestions, that already exists in docblocks and any 
self-respecting IDE already takes advantage of that.  If I use an actual 
return type, it means I *want* any such broken code to fatal and die 
(just as it would for a parameter type "hint").  That's how I know it's 
Doing It Wrong(tm) so I can fix it.  If that means I can't actually 
commit the return type code until I fix the other code, so be it.  
That's my incentive to fix the already broken code. :-)

--Larry Garfield