Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:91572 Return-Path: Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 39911 invoked from network); 9 Mar 2016 10:32:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lists.php.net) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 9 Mar 2016 10:32:08 -0000 X-Host-Fingerprint: 80.177.120.119 marston-home.demon.co.uk Received: from [80.177.120.119] ([80.177.120.119:22205] helo=localhost.localdomain) by pb1.pair.com (ecelerity 2.1.1.9-wez r(12769M)) with ESMTP id A7/98-15119-6ABFFD65 for ; Wed, 09 Mar 2016 05:32:06 -0500 Message-ID: To: internals@lists.php.net References: <1F.91.55238.41F10D65@pb1.pair.com> <56D42CD3.6020602@gmail.com> <56D57DF4.8000906@gmail.com> <56D5D2AD.6070805@gmail.com> <56D5DDA6.4080607@fleshgrinder.com> <40.73.36499.548B6D65@pb1.pair.com> <56D6BBD0.5010505@gmail.com> <56D73386.3000903@fleshgrinder.com> <86.68.21983.A2508D65@pb1.pair.com> <56D86C00.6000904@fleshgrinder.com> <56dd744b.8157620a.cddfc.74ed@mx.google.com> <56DDEF7B.6080309@fleshgrinder.com> <56DECE15.703@lsces.co.uk> <56DF1750.6050503@lsces.co.uk> <56DF3DFB.10007@fleshgrinder.com> In-Reply-To: <56DF3DFB.10007@fleshgrinder.com> Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 10:31:46 -0000 Lines: 7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Importance: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 16.4.3564.1216 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V16.4.3564.1216 X-Posted-By: 80.177.120.119 Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC Proposal] var keyword deprecation/removal From: TonyMarston@hotmail.com ("Tony Marston") wrote in message news:56DF3DFB.10007@fleshgrinder.com... > >@Tony Marston: I feel directly attacked and offended and others have the >feeling too, that is the definition of an insult. That being said, I am >staying constructive the whole time and do not avoid communication with >you or anyone else because I think we are discussing an important topic. >BUT! As Rowan Collins said, keep your emotions aside. The fact that one person sees that as a personal insult while millions of others do not just points to the low threshold of that individual. If I were to write "you are a f*cking idiot" then that WOULD be a personal insult in everybody's eyes, but what I wrote was nowhere near being that personal or that insulting. The fact that that you take offence at my opinion is balanced by the fact that I take offence whenever someone suggests breaking my favourite language FOR NO GOOD REASON other than a personal preference. >On 3/8/2016 10:47 AM, Tony Marston wrote: >> "Rowan Collins" wrote in message news:56DD68C0.1090407@gmail.com... >>> >>> Out of curiosity, which languages are you referring to? It would be >>> interesting to see if there are specific lessons we can learn from >>> their development and compatibility processes, even if the ecosystem >>> they exist in is very different to ours. >> >> COBOL and UNIFACE. >> > >The history of COBOL shows that it was completely overhauled very often >and major changed and breaks had to be made in order to rescue the >language from being a mess. As a developer who went through several COBOL upgrades I can attest to the fact that BC breaks were extremely rare and only for a good reason. My code was never affected simply because I never used any of the dodgy features (such as ALTER ... GO TO ...) which were removed. My company, which was using a framework which I had designed and wriiten, upgraded from COBOL-74 to COBOL-85 without *ANY* issues whatsoever. > Later the designers of COBOL faced the same >problems as we face them here right now, people complained about >changes. In the 1990s the language started declining in popularity and >was replaced by others. You are missing the fact that there are still billions of lines of working COBOL code out there simply because it would be too expensive to rewrite all that code in a different language. >Pay special attention to the fact that over 300 dialects of COBOL exist >and that compatibility issues was one of its major criticized points: > >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL#Compatibility_issues > >Uniface is not a programming language like PHP but they also had >multiple breaking changes between releases. All documented publicly and >easy to find, e.g.: Irrelevant. I personally started with UNIFACE v5 and move through v6 and v7 without any BC breaks. How was this possible? Because I never used those features which caused problems and were later removed. >http://unifaceinfo.com/docs/0905/Uniface_Library_HTML/ulibrary/Migration_5C39D681F0922AFC1A7859CF394AC2F7.html > >I am actually not trying to deface Tony Marston here, I am just saying >that it is unavoidable to deprecate and delete features at some point in >order to keep a language tidy and comprehensible while still offering >people and easy way to upgrade. Imposing your personal ideas of "tidy" and "comprehensible" on the entire PHP userland community is not something that pleases that community. The easiest way to upgrade does not involve having to change working code FOR NO GOOD REASON. -- Tony Marston