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To: "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 11:43:01 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Improving PHP's type system
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> Creating a generic feature that makes sense in a handful of
> situations, while at the same time being one that's
> waiting-to-be-abused in the vast majority of the rest (or as Tom put
> it, a 'footgun') is a pretty poor bargain IMHO.

Completely agree with Zeev here.

It also seems to me that some measure of support for these features
comes from the "coolness factor" - look, ma, we have complex types, just
like those cool academic languages everybody is excited about! And I
don't deny the importance of language having some coolness factor and
getting people excited, but in this case I think it's a bit misplaced -
in *PHP*, I believe, most of the use for this feature would be to hide
lazy design and take shortcuts that should not be taken, instead of
developing robust and powerful type system.

Now, PHP's origins are not exactly in "powerful type system" world, so
it's fine if some people feel not comfortable with this rigidity and
having to declare tons of interfaces, and so on. This is fine. But
inserting shortcuts in the system to make it "strict, but not strict"
seems wrong to me.

-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com