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In-Reply-To: <D5E65B07-2366-4A14-97BF-780267200717@zend.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 23:47:49 +0000
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To: Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Scalar Type Hints
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)

Hi Andi,

> On 5 Feb 2015, at 23:22, Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com> wrote:
>=20
> I have to say I=E2=80=99m pretty disappointed at the opening of the =
vote.=20
> We had a pretty good RFC (thank you) for weak type hinting which was =
aligned with the spirit of PHP and everyone was able to rally around it.

This is far from true. Some people on internals were happy, but only =
some, and everywhere outside internals I looked, the reception was far =
more negative.

> This has now been morphed into something very hard to swallow and IMO =
having such a declare(=E2=80=A6) syntax will be ridiculed by the broader =
app dev community until the end of time=E2=80=A6

Nobody mocks Perl or JS for use strict.

> But even that syntax aside (it=E2=80=99s only syntax after all), I =
think we lost the ability to reach consensus on something so important =
to everyone which we haven=E2=80=99t been able to come to agreement on =
for over 10 years. Finally it was there, in reach and you made a 180 =
degree turn.

=E2=80=9CConsensus=E2=80=9D is exaggerated. There was no consensus and =
to claim there was is to ignore the reality that the PHP community is =
divided over this issue. I=E2=80=99d love to say that everyone loves =
weak type hints and if that version had passed we=E2=80=99d all be =
dancing around happy holding hands, but the reception was not uniformly =
positive, not even close, and that=E2=80=99s just on internals.

> I think it=E2=80=99d be so much easier for us to implement weak type =
hinting. Have everyone rally around it. Be happy and then learn and see =
whether an additional mechanism is really necessary.

Who=E2=80=99d be happy? I realise you and Zeev are big fans of weak =
types, as are many others, but there are also a lot of PHP developers =
who vehemently disagree with you.

> We could even add an E_STRICT_TYPES error_reporting flag to help folks =
=E2=80=9Cdebug=E2=80=9D their code if they so wish to see if there are =
any hotspots in their code they may want to take a look at - again not =
necessarily an error but maybe a debugging tool.

Global error handlers affect all code the interpreter runs, which is why =
we=E2=80=99ve looked down on them in recent times.

> But net, net - why not just implement the thing everyone can agree on.

Everyone doesn=E2=80=99t agree on it.

If everyone did agree on it, v0.1 of the RFC would have been the one =
that went to vote.

> Have something really good in the spirit of the PHP Language for PHP 7 =
and learn how people leverage that=E2=80=A6 The reality is that for the =
majority of the Web community =E2=80=9C1=E2=80=9D coming in from HTTP =
should be accepted as a 1. Period.

It=E2=80=99s very well and good you claiming that the =E2=80=9Cmajority=E2=
=80=9D agree, but this does not match my experiences. The PHP community =
is not a single, homogenous entity. It is very difficult to judge.

> I voted =E2=80=9Cno=E2=80=9D but I will vote =E2=80=9Cyes=E2=80=9D for =
the competing RFC which is 80% of your RFC. Why are we not given that =
option??????

Because I cannot in good conscience push through something in the name =
of =E2=80=9Cconsensus=E2=80=9D which does not even approach it.

--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/