Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:99355
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <03.F6.12681.AF215395@pb1.pair.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <9dffe898-e550-c6d6-46bd-86dcf74735ea@fleshgrinder.com> <CA+kxMuRoMvy6vB0YKd6Ejqu8AsKxrO2x6F9y5i9+cxfJSJ-ihg@mail.gmail.com> <A4.5C.12681.20F62395@pb1.pair.com> <op.y09fz0b4twp9n2@charlie> <F9.E2.12681.8AEC3395@pb1.pair.com> <3cfc0130-e530-64ed-36e8-372b044811a8@rhsoft.net>
In-Reply-To: <3cfc0130-e530-64ed-36e8-372b044811a8@rhsoft.net>
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2017 09:14:47 +0100
Lines: 2
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	format=flowed;
	charset="utf-8";
	reply-type=response
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Importance: Normal
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Class Naming in Core
From: TonyMarston@hotmail.com ("Tony Marston")

wrote in message news:3cfc0130-e530-64ed-36e8-372b044811a8@rhsoft.net...
>
>
>
>Am 04.06.2017 um 11:10 schrieb Tony Marston:
>> If there was never a standard to begin with then there should be proper 
>> justification for introducing one now, and I'm afraid that "to be 
>> consistent" is not a valid argument. What problems are caused by this 
>> inconsistency? What is the cost, both in core developer time and 
>> application developer time, to change it? If the benefits are smaller 
>> than the costs then can the change actually be justified?
>
>seriously, if you don't understand the obvious benefits of consistency when 
>a lot of different people have to deal with source code over a long period 
>of time likely the discussion with you is pointless and just wasted time 
>for everybody involved

Seriously, can you explain in words of one syllable the precise benefits of 
such a consistency? Can you measure the benefits? Just because some OCD 
sufferers like consistency is not a good enough reason. I have been 
programming for over 30 years, and in that time I have had to deal with both 
snake_case and CamelCase, and while I personally find that snake_case is 
more readable, especially with names that contain more than 3 or 4 words, I 
have no trouble reading either. Having a mixture of styles does not cause a 
problem (except in the minds of OCD sufferers) so IMHO it does not require a 
solution. Anybody who says that they cannot work with a mixture of naming 
styles is either a liar or Illiterate.

>in the time you wasted with your mails i typically cleanup inconsistency 
>here and there in a project with 250000 lines of code which dates back to 
>2003 to make my own life as core-developer and everybody elses easier

There are some changes which cause a lot more effort to be wasted. I 
remember that the move from PHP4 to PHP5 was made more difficult than it 
should have been simply because someone decided that the method/function 
names for the XSL extension should be converted from snake_case to CamelCase 
just to be "consistent".

The proposed change is purely cosmetic and has absolutely no effect on 
functionality, so what is the point? There are costs but no benefits, so can 
the change really be justified?

-- 
Tony Marston