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Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 21:56:24 +0000
CC: internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Message-ID: <10AF7FA1-4CC2-4DAD-A504-42939B5C98D4@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Static classes (Was Abstract final classes)
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 1 December 2014 20:30:46 GMT, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:
> 
> The problem is that, well, global state is rarely a good thing, I don’t think we should be encouraging it.

To get a bit philosophical: Is it really the language's job to make that decision? Is there a difference between "encouraging", "allowing", and "enabling"?

Purely static classes are a reality whether this feature is added or not. They do things namespaces can't (and probably shouldn't), but are simpler to work with than singletons (which they closely resemble) or full-blown Dependency Injection. Declaring a static class is just a way of acknowledging that this is a deliberate decision, and instance members should not be added.

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]