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Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 13:41:20 -0500
Message-ID: <CABDNdAGhtV7bOxueGYWLsGPYB3LjdwS44wNJ5x_t0FxmEigLVw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Lars Strojny <lars@strojny.net>
Cc: Matteo Beccati <php@beccati.com>, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Scalar Type Hints
From: pjsturgeon@gmail.com (Philip Sturgeon)

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 1:22 PM, Lars Strojny <lars@strojny.net> wrote:
> Hi Matteo,
>
> sorry for the late response.
>
>> On 07 Feb 2015, at 12:46, Matteo Beccati <php@beccati.com> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe it's just me, but I didn't quite understand the point you are maki=
ng here. Are you saying that declares are more or less like ini settings?
>
> Yes, exactly that. The new declare()-statement will fundamentally change =
how the engine behaves and one will have two learn more or less two flavors=
 of PHP. Even worse I am forced to use the PHP flavor the person picked who=
 changed the declare() statement last.
>
> cu,
> Lars

This is strange for me to understand but I do see it come up a lot.

"if you have foo(string $name), you expect strict type... if you want
weak type, foo($name). All code will work as is today, no BC breaks."

No. If I have foo(string $name), I expect a string. I don't care if
its strong or weak, I just want a string. The weak or strong bit is up
to the user, which is why they're the ones holding the switch.

While I understand the wish to preach best practices to the PHP
community in general - because heck knows some people need it - this
is more of an entry for phptherightway.com than the job of every
single library author to try and force the community ot use strict
typing one library at a time.

The function author doesn't need to care if its strong or weak. They
just need to care that they have the right type. And they will, every
time.

Using foo($name) will give me the wrong types, so no thanks on that :)