On 05 November 2003 15:57, Ilia Alshanetsky contributed these pearls of
wisdom:
PHP is a mix of C, Perl and other styles anyway, why deny it?
It's strength is that it's a pragmatic and simple language
but that doesn't mean that nothing should be changed ever.PHP strength (IMHO) is it's simple and clear syntax, which
allows people who
come from background in other programming languages can
quickly recognize and
get used to. Creating confusing alternate syntaxes will bring
us ever closer
to Perl 6 where there are dozens of way to do the same thing.
The end results
in a confusing and hard to read/write language that all but
the most dedicated of users refuse to use.
Yes, I agree with this, but I also think that a modicum of alternatives in a
few strategically chosen places also makes a language easier to use for
people coming from different backgrounds and with different style prejudices
-- or even just with differently-built brains! A prime example of this is
the "alternative structure syntax" -- as a confirmed and long-time hater of
the curly-brackets-for-everything style (as a result of many years of using
it in B, c, JavaScript and others), I was overjoyed to discover the
alternative :-syntax in PHP and use it exclusively in all my scripts.
Contrariwise, there are some features in (and not in!) PHP that I think are
pretty silly, but some of its prime maintainers defend to the death -- well,
that's their opinion and I would defend to the death their right to have it,
whilst nevertheless continuing to disagree with them.
I don't want to break existing programs. And I don't care
aboutrange()(or even list() too much for that matter), I
just recognize the fact the I'm using a lot of array() and it
is both unnecessarily hard to write and read.That's bull, 5 characters is hard to write? If anything those
5 characters make it absolutely clear to ANYONE that the data
is an array
and not an
object or a string or some other type. When I first saw the
syntax is took me
a few seconds to realize what it does and the problem would
only be compounded when the code is found within an
pre-existing
complex script.
Well, my view on that is the exact contrary -- I find the 5 letters in
question and their associated parentheses easy to lose in the surrounding
and very similar code, whereas the [] syntax both stands out much better
against surrounding noise and is, for me, more intuitive. I think there's
room for both -- I and all the other +1s would no doubt enthusiastically
switch over wholesale to [], whilst you and the other -1s would stick with
array(). I would have no problem with that, and to me it would be an
advantage of the language that it supports such choice.
Cheers!
Mike
--
Mike Ford, Electronic Information Services Adviser,
Learning Support Services, Learning & Information Services,
JG125, James Graham Building, Leeds Metropolitan University,
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Email: m.ford@leedsmet.ac.uk
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