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Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 10:00:41 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Improving PHP's type system
From: TonyMarston@hotmail.com ("Tony Marston")

"Zeev Suraski"  wrote in message 
news:5B147E88-CC0A-4CBC-A49D-C7FE3BF557C0@zend.com...
>
>
>> On 14 ????? 2016, at 7:14, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/13/16 3:24 PM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>>> May I suggest you the following article (more of a starting point into
>>>> Ceylon actually) regarding this topic:
>>> There was a time where PHP was considered a good beginner's language.
>>> Now it seems we want to pivot and target category theory PhDs instead? 
>>> :)
>>
>> A language that is usable primarily by beginners will only be useful for 
>> beginners.  Non-beginners will shun it, or simply grow out of it and 
>> leave.
>>
>> A language that is usable only by PhDs will be useful only for PhDs. 
>> Beginners won't be able to comprehend it.
>>
>> A language that is usable by both beginners and PhDs, and can scale a 
>> user from beginner to PhD within the same language, will be used by both.
>>
>> Doing that is really hard. And really awesome. And the direction PHP has 
>> been trending in recent years is in that direction.  Which is pretty 
>> danged awesome. :-)
>
>I would argue that PHP was already doing that almost since inception.  I 
>think we have ample evidence that we've been seeing a lot of different 
>types of usage - both beginners' and ultra advanced going on in PHP for 
>decades.
>I would also argue that in recent years, the trending direction has been 
>focusing on the "PhDs", while neglecting the simplicity seekers (which I 
>wouldn't necessarily call beginners).  Making PHP more and more about being 
>like yet-another-language, as opposed to one that tries to come up with 
>creative, simplified ways of solving problems.
>Last, I'd argue that a language that tries to be everything for everybody 
>ends up being the "everything's and the kitchen sink", rather than 
>somethings that is truly suitable for everyone.
>
>We also seemed to have dumped some of our fundamental working assumptions - 
>that have made PHP extremely successful to begin with:
>
>- Emphasis on simplicity
>- Adding optional features makes the language more complex regardless of 
>whether everyone uses them or not
>
>It does seem as if we're trying to replicate other languages, relentlessly 
>trying to "fix" PHP, which has been and still is one of the most successful 
>languages out there - typically a lot more so than the languages we're 
>trying to replicate.
>
>Zeev

I agree with Zeev 100%. There are too many people out there who are trying 
to make the language more complicated than it need be just to prove how 
clever they are. The aim of any language should be to enable programmers to 
do complicated things in a simple way, and not to do simple things in a 
complicated way.

I have been programming for over 30 years, so in no way can I be classed as 
a newbie. PHP is my favourite language because of its simplicity. I started 
with PHP 4, and although I have upgraded to PHP 5 I refuse to use any of the 
"clever" additions which have been made to PHP 5 simply because I can 
achieve what I need to achieve WITHOUT using any of those additions.

I will not be making use of any changes that are made to the language in 
order to handle typed variables for the simple reason that PHP was 
specifically designed to be an untyped language, and in the 13+ years that I 
have been programming with PHP I have found that to be more of an advantage 
than a hindrance.

-- 
Tony Marston