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Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 23:51:53 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [Discussion] Short Closures
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> I agree that at first it will feel a little bit weird, especially
> given that PHP in general lacks syntactic sugar (we still don't have a
> short-hand to initialize stdclass objects). We introduced [] back in
> 5.4, and largely it has made readability FAR better (despite some
> people saying it wouldn't at the time).

That doesn't mean now we have to drop all keywords and switch to
write-only style. Even [] was somewhat controversial, though it is the
most elementary syntax construct. Function call is in no way elementary
- it has non-trivial structure, and obscuring this structure by removing
keywords does not help readability.

> tool isn't always appropriate in all situations. You can craft code
> that makes this new syntax look unreadable. But you can craft code

The problem is not that I can. The problem is that anybody can, and a
lot of people would, unwittingly, once the expressions get more complex
that $x+1.

> that makes this look far more readable.
> 
> Example:
> 
> function partial(callable $cb) {
>     return function($left) use ($cb) {
>         return function($right) use ($cb, $left) {
>             return $cb($left, $right);
>         };
>     };
> }

It is a bit verbose but pretty clear what's going on here - function
returns a function that returns a function, and you can easily track
which variable goes where and how it gets to the end.

> 
> vs:
> 
> function partial(callable $cb) {
>     return $left ~> $right ~> $cb($left, $right);
> }

It looks very pretty as the ASCII art, and no entry-level programmer
would have any idea at all what these arrows actually do and how this
thing is supposed to work. At least not without studying the manual very
closely for extended time. That's exactly the problem. People start
writing overly clever code that looks so pretty - and then other people
are left scratching their heads about what actually is happening there.
That's what I mean by write-only code.

> It may look weird at first, but consider that's because you're not
> used to the syntax. To me, the top is far harder to follow because of

Of course, with enough training you can get fluent even in APL. I know
people that are. But PHP is supposed to be on the other end of the
spectrum.

> the shear number of tokens to follow, not to mention that I need to
> pay attention to the use-blocks which may or may not be importing
> certain variables. The bottom reads exactly how I would expect it to.

That's because you wrote it and know in advance what it is supposed to
do. It's not a good test of readability.
-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com