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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC Proposal] var keyword deprecation/removal
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> Old cellphones were shipped with a user manual that contained precise
> instructions on how to deal with the installed OS.

You don't really need a whole manual to know two things are the same.
You only need one line from that manual. It's a minimal effort, well
within expected of what may be required of a person learning new
language - I think reading a couple of lines is not excessive.

> New smartphones do not contain a user manual because the OS is so
> intuitive that nobody has a need for them.

Or so the marketing team would love us to believe ;)
If you think a programming language somehow can be so "intuitive" that
you never need to actually know anything to use it - you're in for a
somewhat unpleasant surprise, unfortunately. We can make learning it
easi-er - and having aliases is part of it - but we can never make it so
easy as never having to actually touch the manual or any other learning
media.

> discussion because you simply say no and do not even allow a

That is not correct. I say no with substantiation - namely, that
removing aliases would cause code breakage and would not add anything to
actual functionality. Your argument seems to be generic "redundancy is
bad" argument, and treating somebody asking questions on stackoverflow
as evidence that we have a problem. Both are wrong - redudancy can be
both good and bad, and in our case I think it is good because it lets
people continue to rely on their previous experience both in PHP and
other languages. Also, somebody asking questions is not a reason to
change the language - there always will be people asking questions, and
that's fine as long as we have good easily accessible answers, which we do.

-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com