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Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 07:01:45 +0300
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Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Ten_years_estimated_Plan_to_replace_PHP=E2=80=99s_inconsis?=
	=?UTF-8?Q?tent_API?=
From: nathan.o.wesley@gmail.com (Nathan wesley)

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I know that many people talked about this over and over.

Why it=E2=80=99s not possible to change the old PHP API ?

    The answer is always because it will make HUGE BC breaks

I=E2=80=99ve seen this wonderful idea about scalar objects authored by niki=
c
github https://github.com/nikic/scalar_objects.

 This will become even more possible when PHP 7 is introduced because of
scalar types and many great features making the idea more reliable.

This makes an opportunity to replace the old API with object oriented one
preventing any kind of BC break.

But instead of using this as an extension because of some limitations like
=E2=80=9Cstring=E2=80=9D->startsWith(=E2=80=98s=E2=80=99); the API should b=
e bundled with the engine (not
written in PHP).

This will make the opportunity to also remove any inconsistencies in the
API behavior as well.

I know that many people here will say that it=E2=80=99s not that important
developers get used to this API and many tutorials based on it.

  But it=E2=80=99s actually really important for the future of the language=
 may be
not so much for the existing developers (I disagree it=E2=80=99s). but this=
 will
also encourage new comers to use PHP.

I=E2=80=99ve seen many articles encouraging new comers to learn languages l=
ike
Python or Ruby, and highly discourage them from using PHP. Also many new
projects are using languages different than PHP. (don=E2=80=99t tell me you=
 haven=E2=80=99t
seen this)

This will be an issue the number of language users will drop significantly
over the years causing the death of the language.

I know that this is not an easy task. But this is a wonderful opportunity
to do this without BC breaks. I=E2=80=99m not suggesting that this should b=
e for
PHP 7.0 because it will take a lot of work may be for  any release in PHP
7.*

PHP internals around 40 people ? not really sure but I know you are very
busy with fixing bugs and you have a lot of work already if you think this
is a huge task it can be assigned to a good group of people similar to how
the amazing PHP Framework Interop Group has accomplished,

for Designing the new Object Oriented API. PHP internals will vote on the
design and  implement it.

The old API should be deprecated in PHP 8.0 and removed completely in PHP
9.0 (finally)

I hope that you take this seriously and tell me if there are any
limitations that prevents this from happening.

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