Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.
The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
So let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.
Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.
Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.
All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).
You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.
There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.
Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to work.
And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.
It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.
But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).
And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.
It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.
Thank you for your time,
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
I vote for PHP-One as a tribute to the xBox 720 ;)
In all seriousness, as much as it sucks I have to agree with Eli, PHP 6 is misleading due to the amount of misinformation out there. However, I'm not sure that changing the versioning of PHP would be beneficial either (it's pretty quick and easy to know if you're up to date by hearing PHP 5.5 vs PHP 5.2. If people want to avoid confusion I would recommend just jumping to version 7.
Just my two cents.
Happy almost Friday everyone!
- Mike
Sent from my iPhone
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
- It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
- It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
So let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to work.And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.Thank you for your time,
Eli--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
IMHO, we should try to fix PHP's version numbering based on others'
problems.
When people try to outsmart others, they may also suffer on consequences of
things not going the way they plan/want.
+1 on PHP6.
I vote for PHP-One as a tribute to the xBox 720 ;)
In all seriousness, as much as it sucks I have to agree with Eli, PHP 6 is
misleading due to the amount of misinformation out there. However, I'm not
sure that changing the versioning of PHP would be beneficial either (it's
pretty quick and easy to know if you're up to date by hearing PHP 5.5 vs
PHP 5.2. If people want to avoid confusion I would recommend just jumping
to version 7.Just my two cents.
Happy almost Friday everyone!
- Mike
Sent from my iPhone
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
- It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
- It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
So let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to
work.And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.Thank you for your time,
Eli--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |--
--
Guilherme Blanco
MSN: guilhermeblanco@hotmail.com
GTalk: guilhermeblanco
Toronto - ON/Canada
IMHO, we should try to fix PHP's version numbering based on others'
problems.
When people try to outsmart others, they may also suffer on consequences of
things not going the way they plan/want.+1 on PHP6.
It's not about trying to teach the authors (and their publishers) a lesson by consequence.
It's about trying to help those who are (and will continue to be) confused by that mess.
FWIW (if it even matters), I'm +1 on shipping "PHP 6" off to Uzbekistan, and calling the next major version PHP 7.
S
IMHO, we should try to fix PHP's version numbering based on others'
problems.
When people try to outsmart others, they may also suffer on
consequences of
things not going the way they plan/want.+1 on PHP6.
It's not about trying to teach the authors (and their publishers) a
lesson by consequence.
It's about trying to help those who are (and will continue to be)
confused by that mess.FWIW (if it even matters), I'm +1 on shipping "PHP 6" off to
Uzbekistan, and calling the next major version PHP 7.
Well said Sean, and exactly on point. It's about specifically helping
out those that are going to be otherwise confused. And it's a zero-pain
thing for us to do. It's just a number to us.
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
MariaDB jumped from 5.5 directly to version 10 and as far as I know no
one is confused. PHP is not the same thing, however skipping a number is
not such a big deal. Plus it will take ages for anyone to really start
using PHP Next (be it 6 or 7). By that time everyone will know that 10
years old books are not the ones you would like to learn from. As far as
I see it, PHP 6 was failed experiment. However PHP 7 could be shiny
thing that makes real difference in our lives. I know that i'm not from
Internals and I do not get any saying in this. However I'm "regular
developer" and maybe you are interested in opinion of such people too.
After all, if you do not know what to do - ask. Put voting in php.net
and ask people what they want and what they think. Will they be
confused? Will they not? Is 6 or 7 better? Communicate.
IMHO, we should try to fix PHP's version numbering based on others'
problems.
When people try to outsmart others, they may also suffer on
consequences of
things not going the way they plan/want.+1 on PHP6.
It's not about trying to teach the authors (and their publishers) a
lesson by consequence.
It's about trying to help those who are (and will continue to be)
confused by that mess.FWIW (if it even matters), I'm +1 on shipping "PHP 6" off to
Uzbekistan, and calling the next major version PHP 7.Well said Sean, and exactly on point. It's about specifically helping
out those that are going to be otherwise confused. And it's a
zero-pain thing for us to do. It's just a number to us.Eli
--
| Eli White |http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
--
Endijs Lisovskis
Mob.: +371-29377478
Email: endijs@gmail.com
Blog: http://endijs.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/endijs
Google+ : http://ongplus.com/endijs
MariaDB jumped from 5.5 directly to version 10 and as far as I know no one
is confused. PHP is not the same thing, however skipping a number is not
such a big deal. Plus it will take ages for anyone to really start using
PHP Next (be it 6 or 7). By that time everyone will know that 10 years old
books are not the ones you would like to learn from. As far as I see it,
PHP 6 was failed experiment. However PHP 7 could be shiny thing that makes
real difference in our lives. I know that i'm not from Internals and I do
not get any saying in this. However I'm "regular developer" and maybe you
are interested in opinion of such people too.After all, if you do not know what to do - ask. Put voting in php.net and
ask people what they want and what they think. Will they be confused?
Will they not? Is 6 or 7 better? Communicate.
In that case, why not just do that for every PHP release, then? We can
just do away with a sane, logical versioning system altogether and go with
whatever the focus groups like best. And who says they have to be numeric
at all? Let's call the next release PHP Vista. That has a nice ring to
it. Then we could tie it to the year call the next one PHP 2016. Then we
can be retro and call the next version PHP 7, even though it's the 8th
release, because the marketing folks think 7 "just works better".
Man, this'll make it especially fun for developers trying to require a
minimum version in their code.... Yep, that's much less confusing.
--Kris
Man, this'll make it especially fun for developers trying to require a
minimum version in their code.... Yep, that's much less confusing.
I know this was the punchline to your joke, but just to sneak in a
serious point about exactly how little difference this makes on a
technical level - 7.0 is higher than 5.6 in any sane comparison. Come to
that, it's higher than 6.0, too, so go ahead and set 6.0 as your minimum
version, and let people find a 7.0 binary to fulfil it!
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
PHP 6.1?
Andrey
I can't believe this conversation's still happening.
I wish we'd all stop talking about the version number and start writing the
actual version.
Who cares what we call it for now? Until its released it doesn't really
matter.
And when that happens, do what every other sane project does regardless of
external, unofficial literature: increment the version number and release.
- Trevor
PHP 6.1?
Andrey
+1 on PHP 7.0.
Sent from my mobile
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
- It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
- It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
So let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to work.And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.Thank you for your time,
Eli--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
There is potential for confusion regardless of what we do. If it's PHP 6,
we get conflicts with existing literature. If it's PHP 7, this will lead to
confusion about a version number being skipped. (Which is imho a pretty big
wtf moment.)
I find it quite ridiculous to break our versioning scheme over this kind of
nonesense.
Nikita
There is potential for confusion regardless of what we do. If it's PHP 6,
we get conflicts with existing literature. If it's PHP 7, this will lead to
confusion about a version number being skipped. (Which is imho a pretty big
wtf moment.)I find it quite ridiculous to break our versioning scheme over this kind of
nonesense.Nikita
Sounds like a typical case of "marketing screwed up development", where did
I see that?
I agree with Nikita - it makes no sense to adapt to broken literature that
is well known to be wrong.
I'd be more worried by all the confusion about "where did PHP 6 go?", as
well as the panic for those folks who are constantly scared by upgrades.
And yes, it would be laughable to have PHP7 without a PHP6 :-)
Marco Pivetta
Sounds like a typical case of "marketing screwed up development", where did
I see that?I agree with Nikita - it makes no sense to adapt to broken literature that
is well known to be wrong.
I'd be more worried by all the confusion about "where did PHP 6 go?", as
well as the panic for those folks who are constantly scared by upgrades.And yes, it would be laughable to have PHP7 without a PHP6 :-)
Thanks for the feedback Marco. A few responses:
-
On the 'marketing screwed up' and 'adapting to broken literature'.
Realize that if we call the language PHP6, we are actually helping
those marketers who named their books PHP6. They will get a large boost
in sales as people search for books on this 'new PHP'. -
On being 'well known to be wrong'.
I believe you missed part of my message, which was pointing out that
it's not actually well known. In the grand scheme of things, yes, the
'core community' knows that these things are wrong. But the point is
that you would be amazed that for every community member you know, there
are a dozen programmers out there who don't know that any sort of
community exists. I just ran into a company in a nearby town 2 nights
ago, who suddenly had 3 programmers from their firm show up to a local
meetup. They'd been doing PHP development for 10 years now - They had
no idea that meetups, or any online community existed.And once 'real' books about PHP6 come out, and would be sitting next
to the 'incorrect' books on PHP6. How can one tell in a basic amazon
book search, which are accurate, and which are incorrect? You can't
even go off of the publication date, because often when publishers
re-print a book, those dates automatically rev. -
"Where did PHP6 go?"
For those that have that question, it will be a simple google to
answer it, and I would expect it to be a big story on php.net explaining
it. On the converse, if we release a PHP6, then noone will question
it. Noone will google: "Is the current PHP6 the same as the PHP6 that
was supposed to come out years ago?" Because there's no reason to
question it. -
"laughable to have PHP7 without a PHP6"
Yes and no. In the history of software development, this has
actually happened many times in the past. I could quote a number of
examples. (Word & WordPress anyone?) And really There is definite
precedent for it. We had a PHP6, there was a branch. It was deemed a
dead product, and so you move on to 7.More importantly in this case, it comes back to: I doesn't hurt us,
at all, to just call it 7 and move forward, with a blog post explaining
why it was done, because 6 was a 'dead product branch'. There is no
drawback. And the benefit to the untold masses of programmers out
there, both current, and those who will be picking up PHP in the future,
is great.
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Eli <eli@eliw.com
mailto:eli@eliw.com> wrote:Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I hadn't done so. The short form is: We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons: 1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt 2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something elseThere is potential for confusion regardless of what we do. If it's PHP
6, we get conflicts with existing literature. If it's PHP 7, this will
lead to confusion about a version number being skipped. (Which is imho
a pretty big wtf moment.)I find it quite ridiculous to break our versioning scheme over this
kind of nonesense.
Nikita, thank you for your feedback. I would like to point out a major
difference between these levels of confusion here:
-
We name it PHP6, people who try to find information on PHP6, find old
books and old articles, read them, think they are accurate, learn
incorrect/wrong information, and get extremely frustrated when nothing
they are trying to do works. They will be taught bad information.
Things will not work. Worst case, they give up on PHP completely
because of it. -
We name it PHP7, A majority of the 'non-connected' just see the
latest version and upgrade. The majority of the connected, understand.
Then there are some people go: "huh? what happened to PHP6", so they
google, and will find the story. At no point does anyone who is
attempting to learn, get taught incorrect material.
I would much rather have a few people go 'huh? What happened to 6'.
... Then have people paying money for books, supporting authors who
'jumped the gun', for ancient information that is incorrect.
Thanks,
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Eli <eli@eliw.com
mailto:eli@eliw.com> wrote:Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I hadn't done so. The short form is: We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons: 1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt 2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something elseThere is potential for confusion regardless of what we do. If it's
PHP 6, we get conflicts with existing literature. If it's PHP 7, this
will lead to confusion about a version number being skipped. (Which
is imho a pretty big wtf moment.)I find it quite ridiculous to break our versioning scheme over this
kind of nonesense.Nikita, thank you for your feedback. I would like to point out a
major difference between these levels of confusion here:
- We name it PHP6, people who try to find information on PHP6, find
old books and old articles, read them, think they are accurate, learn
incorrect/wrong information, and get extremely frustrated when nothing
they are trying to do works. They will be taught bad information.
Things will not work. Worst case, they give up on PHP completely
because of it.
That is not our problem. People buying books are not stupid. They know
that authors write books in advance of products being released.
- We name it PHP7, A majority of the 'non-connected' just see the
latest version and upgrade. The majority of the connected,
understand. Then there are some people go: "huh? what happened to
PHP6", so they google, and will find the story. At no point does
anyone who is attempting to learn, get taught incorrect material.
You are going to drive away the authors for this approach. They need to
know what the next product is to write about it. Why do you want to
antagonize them?
I would much rather have a few people go 'huh? What happened to 6'.
... Then have people paying money for books, supporting authors who
'jumped the gun', for ancient information that is incorrect.
It doesn't matter when people support the authors or authors jump the
gun. That is life in this world..
--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something elseThere is potential for confusion regardless of what we do. If it's PHP 6,
we get conflicts with existing literature. If it's PHP 7, this will lead to
confusion about a version number being skipped. (Which is imho a pretty big
wtf moment.)I find it quite ridiculous to break our versioning scheme over this kind of
nonesense.Nikita
I have to agree with this.
--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us
Hi
2014-04-02 14:48 GMT+02:00 Eli eli@eliw.com:
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.
I disagree with the regard to not call it PHP6, if we together with
our community put together an effort to squish out the PHP6 books,
like we did when we tried to push PHP5 over PHP4, then there it should
not be a problem, and since PHP6 was due many years ago, I doubt many
of those books still are in print and how many books could there be
around still, I get that someone would feel angry over buying a book
about features available in a non existing version, but that should be
on the authors behalf, not ours while I realise this will hurt us a
little, we have already faced the fact that we made a mistake with the
old unicode implementation and we live with that, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6
shows that.
I just don't think that some books written 8 years or so ago will
justify the need for us to change version numbers, we can advertise
against them and we all should, I have when I'm asked about books and
future development of PHP6 and will continue to do so, everyone
should, teaming up with PHP FIG, and all of the frameworks is a good
idea here to prevent many more books getting in the hands of readers
whom will learn about something that does not exists.
--
regards,
Kalle Sommer Nielsen
kalle@php.net
and since PHP6 was due many years ago, I doubt many of those books
still are in print and how many books could there be around still, I
get that someone would feel angry over buying a book about features
available in a non existing version, but that should be on the authors
behalf, not ours while I realise this will hurt us a little
Kalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in
my original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of
these books are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to
stop a publisher from continuing to sell a book they've already invested
in, which costs them nothing to continue to sell.
And once other books are out, they will sit equally.
And you mention the author's, but realize that the issue isn't the
author's. Usually it's the publisher who is deciding the final name of
a book. Many well known authors/community members even got caught by
this, such as Timothy Boronczyk, Elizabeth Naramore, and Larry Ullman.
To that end, it's not that we should be caring about 'who anger is
directed at'. That's not the point. The point is that by a simple
renaming, we can stop any confusion caused by these old books. We can
make new accurate books stand out in the crowd. And we can avoid, not
anger, but people getting frustrated and blaming 'PHP' as the cause, and
leaving for something else.
A small decision here, with zero pain (it's just a number). Can quickly
aleve future pain for people.
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
and since PHP6 was due many years ago, I doubt many of those books still
are in print and how many books could there be around still, I get that
someone would feel angry over buying a book about features available in a
non existing version, but that should be on the authors behalf, not ours
while I realise this will hurt us a littleKalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in my
original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of these
books are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to stop a
publisher from continuing to sell a book they've already invested in, which
costs them nothing to continue to sell.And once other books are out, they will sit equally.
They will not sit equally. If someone buys a PHP 6 book and finds out that
half the code in there doesn't actually work on PHP 6, it's going to get a
1 star review on Amazon and the issue takes care of itself.
Also, I have some doubts that calling this release PHP 7 will be any
significant help with the issue: Assume that we call it PHP 7 and it was
just released. There are no books about it yet. So if someone looks for a
current PHP book and there's nothing about PHP 7, then what's he going to
buy? The next closest thing, namely a PHP 6 book. Nice, we're back at the
same problem, just with messed up versioning.
The PHP 7 name could only show benefits in the long term, to distinguish
from the old books. However, as already said, at that point we're back at
the reviews ;) Presumably a newer book about the actually released PHP 6
version would have higher ratings (unless its crap, of course).
TL;DR I don't think this is a big issue in the first place, but even
assuming that it is, the usual review system should take care of it by
itself. Also calling it PHP 7 won't really solve the problem anyways.
Nikita
Nikita makes a valid point about not having any PHP 7 books out there and
people jumping to the PHP 6 books right away.. I think regardless of how
this is done there has to be an educational push to help people realize
that many materials on PHP 6 are NOT about the real PHP 6.
On the flip side, I see another danger, and that is people grabbing these
PHP 6 books and presenting on materials based on them to prepare their
teams/ user groups/ etc for PHP 6... thus spreading the misinformation-
whereas I do not think developers would be as prone to do the same if it
was called PHP 7.
Unfortunately, while many more experienced users with PHP would write 1
star reviews, you will have quite a few programmers who are not privy to
these conversations getting lost, confused, and complaining that PHP 6 just
doesn't work. I think you'll see greater misinformation, less conversion
from new users, and more support tickets/ filed bugs with the PHP 6
approach.
Unfortunately, any way you slice/ dice this it sucks. But the fact is that
the PHP 6 books out there now are extremely misleading and are not up to
PHP 5.3 snuff (let alone traits and generators), and regardless of what
action we take we're going to run into issues with this. I think the
question is how do we mitigate the risk and make the upgrade as easy and
painless as possible for everyone involved.
and since PHP6 was due many years ago, I doubt many of those books still
are in print and how many books could there be around still, I get that
someone would feel angry over buying a book about features available in a
non existing version, but that should be on the authors behalf, not ours
while I realise this will hurt us a littleKalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in
my
original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of these
books are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to stop a
publisher from continuing to sell a book they've already invested in,
which
costs them nothing to continue to sell.And once other books are out, they will sit equally.
They will not sit equally. If someone buys a PHP 6 book and finds out that
half the code in there doesn't actually work on PHP 6, it's going to get a
1 star review on Amazon and the issue takes care of itself.Also, I have some doubts that calling this release PHP 7 will be any
significant help with the issue: Assume that we call it PHP 7 and it was
just released. There are no books about it yet. So if someone looks for a
current PHP book and there's nothing about PHP 7, then what's he going to
buy? The next closest thing, namely a PHP 6 book. Nice, we're back at the
same problem, just with messed up versioning.The PHP 7 name could only show benefits in the long term, to distinguish
from the old books. However, as already said, at that point we're back at
the reviews ;) Presumably a newer book about the actually released PHP 6
version would have higher ratings (unless its crap, of course).TL;DR I don't think this is a big issue in the first place, but even
assuming that it is, the usual review system should take care of it by
itself. Also calling it PHP 7 won't really solve the problem anyways.Nikita
--
"My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you." John 15:12
Books are not the issue.
We used to have PHP 6. We used to have it for years. It's not only
in books but also mentioned in countless websites, discussed in
countless conferences, had its own tree and lives in many people's
minds as a certain thing. Needless to say the version we're going to
release will have absolutely nothing to do with that thing. Why would
we want to call it by the same name beyond unnecessary inflexibility?
The confusion that skipping a version might bring is meaningless.
"What happened to 6?" This is a trivia question, it doesn't even
matter whether people get the right answer or even any answer. Who
cares?
On the flip side, taking a completely different thing and putting it
under the same reinstated PHP 6 name has much worse potential for
confusion. The only reason I can think of to go with PHP 6 is to get
back at evil book authors that released PHP 6 books. Yes, that's not
a very good reason.
Honestly I don't even understand why it's a big deal to anybody.
Whether we skip to 7 or even 8 or 42, we still have infinity ahead of
us with plenty of room for future evolution. Let's not be so fussy
about these things.
Zeev
Nikita makes a valid point about not having any PHP 7 books out there and
people jumping to the PHP 6 books right away.. I think regardless of how
this is done there has to be an educational push to help people realize
that many materials on PHP 6 are NOT about the real PHP 6.On the flip side, I see another danger, and that is people grabbing these
PHP 6 books and presenting on materials based on them to prepare their
teams/ user groups/ etc for PHP 6... thus spreading the misinformation-
whereas I do not think developers would be as prone to do the same if it
was called PHP 7.Unfortunately, while many more experienced users with PHP would write 1
star reviews, you will have quite a few programmers who are not privy to
these conversations getting lost, confused, and complaining that PHP 6 just
doesn't work. I think you'll see greater misinformation, less conversion
from new users, and more support tickets/ filed bugs with the PHP 6
approach.Unfortunately, any way you slice/ dice this it sucks. But the fact is that
the PHP 6 books out there now are extremely misleading and are not up to
PHP 5.3 snuff (let alone traits and generators), and regardless of what
action we take we're going to run into issues with this. I think the
question is how do we mitigate the risk and make the upgrade as easy and
painless as possible for everyone involved.and since PHP6 was due many years ago, I doubt many of those books still
are in print and how many books could there be around still, I get that
someone would feel angry over buying a book about features available in a
non existing version, but that should be on the authors behalf, not ours
while I realise this will hurt us a littleKalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in
my
original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of these
books are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to stop a
publisher from continuing to sell a book they've already invested in,
which
costs them nothing to continue to sell.And once other books are out, they will sit equally.
They will not sit equally. If someone buys a PHP 6 book and finds out that
half the code in there doesn't actually work on PHP 6, it's going to get a
1 star review on Amazon and the issue takes care of itself.Also, I have some doubts that calling this release PHP 7 will be any
significant help with the issue: Assume that we call it PHP 7 and it was
just released. There are no books about it yet. So if someone looks for a
current PHP book and there's nothing about PHP 7, then what's he going to
buy? The next closest thing, namely a PHP 6 book. Nice, we're back at the
same problem, just with messed up versioning.The PHP 7 name could only show benefits in the long term, to distinguish
from the old books. However, as already said, at that point we're back at
the reviews ;) Presumably a newer book about the actually released PHP 6
version would have higher ratings (unless its crap, of course).TL;DR I don't think this is a big issue in the first place, but even
assuming that it is, the usual review system should take care of it by
itself. Also calling it PHP 7 won't really solve the problem anyways.Nikita
--
"My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you." John 15:12
They will not sit equally. If someone buys a PHP 6 book and finds out that
half the code in there doesn't actually work on PHP 6, it's going to get a
1 star review on Amazon and the issue takes care of itself.
Hi everyone,
As part of the writing part of the community, I would much rather have a
PHP 7 than a "revised PHP 6" version. Speak of article maintenance... And
like Eli said, there actually is a PHP6 already: it's a dead branch. Just
flag it on the php.net website, maybe in the downloads section and the docs
with a nice announcement link, and everyone will be happy.
As a reader, I wouldn't expect any PHP 6 material to be outdated (should I
find it by chance, or should I look for it). And why would I automatically
jump on a PHP 6 book to learn PHP 7?
Also, that next version is still to come and authors still have time to
properly write on this next version. These books have time to get famous,
etc. Not to mention online articles.
As for the reviews of existing books, might I suggest you take a look at
some of them? They have had much time to get lots of stars, and I am not
convinced that ratings are negatively affected by age (maybe even the
reverse?).
Now, why is this so much of a deal? As Eli rightly pointed out, that's not
a big deal for the core dev community (you) and for the writers out there.
However, it would avoid much campaigning and confusion, neither of which I
am convinced can solve anything or be solved.
Best regards,
--
Guillaume Rossolini
Kalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in my
original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of these books
are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to stop a publisher from
continuing to sell a book they've already invested in, which costs them nothing
to continue to sell.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_4?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=php6&sprefix=php6
I think is the most compelling case for skipping '6'.
Look at the confusion still being created on google by 'mozilla firebird'
despite the fact the names was changed to firefox 10 years ago. It was only used
for a short time. PHP6 discussions have gone on for the last 10 years.
I don't think anybody will be confused as to why PHP6 was not released since
it's a simple fact that the planned development path simply did not work. PHP7
allows a clean sheet and nobody will be confused by currently 770 thousands hits
on google and 419 thousand on bing hits on 'PHP6'.
What the ... try a search on PHP7 :(
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
Kalle, thanks for responding. I believe however you missed the part in my
original message where I pointed out that in fact a large number of these
books
are still in print. And no 'campaign' from us is going to stop a
publisher from
continuing to sell a book they've already invested in, which costs them
nothing
to continue to sell.http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_4?url=search-
alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=php6&sprefix=php6 I think is the most
compelling case for skipping '6'.Look at the confusion still being created on google by 'mozilla firebird'
despite the fact the names was changed to firefox 10 years ago. It was only
used for a short time. PHP6 discussions have gone on for the last 10 years.I don't think anybody will be confused as to why PHP6 was not released
since it's a simple fact that the planned development path simply did not
work. PHP7 allows a clean sheet and nobody will be confused by currently
770 thousands hits on google and 419 thousand on bing hits on 'PHP6'.What the ... try a search on PHP7 :(
--
Lester Caine - G8HFLContact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
I don't think there will be any significant amount of confusion over PHP 6
(I'm more confused about why you're dropping the space). In 1948, the
Chicago Tribune infamously went to print with the erroneous headline,
"Dewey Defeats Truman". That led to a lot of confusion, too-- that is, at
first. Numerous other publications made the same mistake. The Journal of
Commerce, for example, published 8 articles in its November 3 edition about
what to expect from President Dewey. The paper's headline read, "Dewey
Victory Seen as Mandate to Open New Era of Government-Business Harmony,
Public Confidence". I guess headlines were more verbose back then.
There's little to no confusion over what the outcome was today. We
certainly don't list Thomas E. Dewey as the 34th President of the United
States just to avoid "confusion."
We shouldn't skip an entire version increment just because a few authors
screwed-up. I don't know a single person who refers to any part of the 5.x
branch as PHP 6, nor have I heard a single developer complain that there
will be confusion when PHP 6 is released. Skipping the version increment
would be a solution in search of a problem and would only serve to cause
more confusion.
--Kris
We shouldn't skip an entire version increment just because a few authors
screwed-up. I don't know a single person who refers to any part of the 5.x
branch as PHP 6, nor have I heard a single developer complain that there
will be confusion when PHP 6 is released. Skipping the version increment
would be a solution in search of a problem and would only serve to cause
more confusion.
When I google "php 6", I get over 800,000 results. This issue seems to
go well beyond "a few authors."
Adam
And when I google "php 7" (in quotes), I get 901,000 results.
--Kris
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Adam Jon Richardson adamjonr@gmail.comwrote:
We shouldn't skip an entire version increment just because a few authors
screwed-up. I don't know a single person who refers to any part of the
5.x
branch as PHP 6, nor have I heard a single developer complain that there
will be confusion when PHP 6 is released. Skipping the version increment
would be a solution in search of a problem and would only serve to cause
more confusion.When I google "php 6", I get over 800,000 results. This issue seems to
go well beyond "a few authors."Adam
And when I google "php 7" (in quotes), I get 901,000 results.
Funny :)
Seriously, though, did you compare the result sets? Try viewing the
context for the "php 6" search. Randomly dig into the results, going
further into the pages, and I believe you'll see that many of results
appear to be related to the now-dead branch (I quick viewed up through
results page 35, where they stopped.) Compare that context with the
results for "php 7," which appear to be coincidentally proximal
occurrences of "php" and "7" unrelated to any version.
The point is, there are more than just a few authors that, in your
words, screwed up. There were many resources focused on the expected
release, and much of that information is still online, in addition to
books, podcasts, etc.
Adam
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Adam Jon Richardson adamjonr@gmail.comwrote:
And when I google "php 7" (in quotes), I get 901,000 results.
Funny :)
Seriously, though, did you compare the result sets? Try viewing the
context for the "php 6" search. Randomly dig into the results, going
further into the pages, and I believe you'll see that many of results
appear to be related to the now-dead branch (I quick viewed up through
results page 35, where they stopped.) Compare that context with the
results for "php 7," which appear to be coincidentally proximal
occurrences of "php" and "7" unrelated to any version.The point is, there are more than just a few authors that, in your
words, screwed up. There were many resources focused on the expected
release, and much of that information is still online, in addition to
books, podcasts, etc.Adam
--
Yes but that was my point: Just because there's a lot of results doesn't
mean they're actually relevant. I just did a quick search for "PHP 6".
After looking through 2 pages of results, I found only one page that
seemed to reference the now-defunct plans for PHP 6. It was dated 2007.
And even then, it made no mention of a set release date; just the usual
stuff about unicode support and misc cleanup.
All the other results in my sample were recent and fell into one of two
categories: Discussion/predictions about what will be coming-up in the
actual PHP 6 release and complaining about why it's taking so long for
PHP 6 to come out.
If we suddenly just skip it entirely and go to PHP 7, we're going to have a
shitload of results from people asking, "What ever happened to PHP 6?!" and
why they can't find it anywhere.
--Kris
We shouldn't skip an entire version increment just because a few authors
screwed-up. I don't know a single person who refers to any part of the 5.x
branch as PHP 6, nor have I heard a single developer complain that there
will be confusion when PHP 6 is released. Skipping the version increment
would be a solution in search of a problem and would only serve to cause
more confusion.
Getting back to your points:
-
You said "a few authors screwed-up." I think we can both agree that
there are many websites that have information about the now-defunct
branch of PHP 6. Try revising the search to "php 6" + unicode,
filtering out results based on url, etc. Now, you may go on to say
that the existence of this information shouldn't be a reason to
abandon the naming convention. Perhaps. But, I would confidently argue
that the number of conflicting resources will not be "few." -
You said you've not hear a single developer complain that there will
be confusion. I believe you've heard a few on this very list :)
Adam
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:26 PM, Adam Jon Richardson adamjonr@gmail.comwrote:
We shouldn't skip an entire version increment just because a few authors
screwed-up. I don't know a single person who refers to any part of the
5.x
branch as PHP 6, nor have I heard a single developer complain that there
will be confusion when PHP 6 is released. Skipping the version increment
would be a solution in search of a problem and would only serve to cause
more confusion.Getting back to your points:
- You said "a few authors screwed-up." I think we can both agree that
there are many websites that have information about the now-defunct
branch of PHP 6. Try revising the search to "php 6" + unicode,
filtering out results based on url, etc. Now, you may go on to say
that the existence of this information shouldn't be a reason to
abandon the naming convention. Perhaps. But, I would confidently argue
that the number of conflicting resources will not be "few."
Well now we're arguing semantics. Seeing as how you have to include these
filters and the results only make-up a tiny fraction of the total--
combined with the fact that those results are all from more than half a
decade ago-- I think the word "few" is generous.
- You said you've not hear a single developer complain that there will
be confusion. I believe you've heard a few on this very list :)
Yes, and only on this very list. Nowhere else. OP mentioned it being a
hot topic at conferences and I'm just saying that that has not been my
experience at all. In fact, this is the first I've heard anyone complain
of the coming PHP 6 release somehow being confused with 5.x because of a
few mistitled books from the previous decade. I certainly don't think it's
worth all the confusion that would result from skipping an entire major
version increment.
--Kris
Kris Craig wrote:
Well now we're arguing semantics. Seeing as how you have to include these
filters and the results only make-up a tiny fraction of the total--
combined with the fact that those results are all from more than half a
decade ago-- I think the word "few" is generous.
Which is why I targeted books currently actively being sold on Amazon ... all of
which have little to do with any of the new planning for PHPX. But results
produced by both google and bing perhaps indicate why there was never a windows
4,5 or 6. People are more than used to strange naming sequences, and while I
would happily accept a switch to PHP'X', PHP6 may not have been distributed but
it has a very real existence in development work.
So I'm with Zeev, Andi and others. Searching just PHP sites, PHP7 only comes up
a few times and in context of further changes to those planned in PHP6
previously. Even Rasmus has pointed out that the existing PHP6 plans documented
in all those premature books, many of which are available as ebboks now, was
more than just unicode, so how would a novice know if they are looking at
newPHP6 or oldPHP6 material?
This really is a no brainer ...
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
Kris Craig wrote:
Well now we're arguing semantics. Seeing as how you have to include these
filters and the results only make-up a tiny fraction of the total--
combined with the fact that those results are all from more than half a
decade ago-- I think the word "few" is generous.Which is why I targeted books currently actively being sold on Amazon ...
all of which have little to do with any of the new planning for PHPX. But
results produced by both google and bing perhaps indicate why there was
never a windows 4,5 or 6. People are more than used to strange naming
sequences, and while I would happily accept a switch to PHP'X', PHP6 may
not have been distributed but it has a very real existence in development
work.So I'm with Zeev, Andi and others. Searching just PHP sites, PHP7 only
comes up a few times and in context of further changes to those planned in
PHP6 previously. Even Rasmus has pointed out that the existing PHP6 plans
documented in all those premature books, many of which are available as
ebboks now, was more than just unicode, so how would a novice know if they
are looking at newPHP6 or oldPHP6 material?
What about the thousands of books on PHP 5 that is about PHP 5.2 or 5.1
still?
If somebody wants to learn PHP 5 and they buy a book, how would they know
if they are going to learn 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 to or get outdated information
about 5.2? For that reason why was PHP 5.3 never named PHP 7 and PHP 5.4
named PHP 8 to avoid confusion with authors still writing about PHP 5.2?
So how about going with PHP 6.1?
There are many resources that specifically target PHP 5.3 and 5.4 and 5.5,
so authors can do the same for 6.1
If someone wants to learn the latest version of PHP, they would just google
for books on PHP 6.1 and not ask questions about why there is a version 7
without a version 6.
I’ve always felt we should make the next major release PHP 7. It would avoid a lot of confusion.
Andi
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
- It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
- It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
So let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to work.And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.Thank you for your time,
Eli--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
Hi Eli,
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.
It is amazing to see that the most important thing in php-next is the
version number.
The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
It hurts us. We were pathetic in our previous attempt for php 6, which
by the way was never released nor existed. We will be clowns by
skipping a version for some totally random reasons.
Let put things in perspective:
- PHP 6-dev (the -dev part is important here) was killed 5 years ago
(or maybe more, did not check the exact time) - book about it have been released, how it is remotely related to us
is a mistery but let consider them as valid...
. Current idea is to get 6 out in ~ two years. Making these books
like 7-8 years old by the time php 6 will be released
. The communication about the development of php 6 will outcome any
legacy results in google/bing and other
. The couple of books still on sale are likely to be removed (if not
already, as I never saw one except ebook, and really, anyone buying 5
years old book in tech ...)
So in short, I really do not care about this version number. However I
do care about the success of PHP, how we are seen from the outside (in
case you do not realize it, we are bad, whether it is true or not is
irrelevant). I think we should go with the logical and mathematical
step, 5+1=6. The arguments about possible confusions refer to the few
who ever bought these books or read some 5 years old blog posts. Know
what? They will most likely focus on what we will communicate about
this next major version now and here, they care about what will
actually be done rather than some pointless marketing related moves.
The same kind of moves were often rejected or disregarded because
"nothing to do with php.net". The same argument applies.
On the other hand, I find disturbing than almost everyone
participating in this thread did not post a single reply, feedback, a
single idea or proposal about what we should do for the next major
release. Priorities anyone?
As a reminder, this is what we have so far, https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6
I won't reply or argue in this thread or any other related to the
version number, this is totally irrelevant to me and only confirms the
total lack of understanding of our users needs right now. I apologize
for that or if I offend anyone here, but this mail targets us all, me
included. Time to focus on what matters and do not spend precious time
on such ridiculous discussions.
Cheers,
Pierre
@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org
On the other hand, I find disturbing than almost everyone
participating in this thread did not post a single reply, feedback, a
single idea or proposal about what we should do for the next major
release. Priorities anyone?As a reminder, this is what we have so far,
https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6
I'm one of the guilty parties as far as that goes. I'll remedy that by
posting some thoughts on the relevant thread, though I'm not sure how
helpful they'll actually be.
--Kris
Hi all.
Let put things in perspective:
- PHP 6-dev (the -dev part is important here) was killed 5 years ago
(or maybe more, did not check the exact time)- book about it have been released, how it is remotely related to us
is a mistery but let consider them as valid...
. Current idea is to get 6 out in ~ two years. Making these books
like 7-8 years old by the time php 6 will be released
. The communication about the development of php 6 will outcome any
legacy results in google/bing and other
. The couple of books still on sale are likely to be removed (if not
already, as I never saw one except ebook, and really, anyone buying 5
years old book in tech ...)
Calling it 6 in the first place was potentially the mistake, one we maybe
shouldn't make a second time.
At the moment, PHP.next doesn't really exist. What it will eventually be
called is surely a question for when we get around to distributing it, e.g.
shortly before first alpha. Until then (imo) there is no benefit to
deciding this now, or in the near future. Any use of names PHP6 or PHP7 or
even PHP8 before it exists is just going to continue the issues brought up
here in the future.
That being the case, perhaps keeping the naming as simply php.next (branch
included) or using basic code names is the way to go. This should stop
people getting confused in the future if a branch doesn't make it to
release (no version number), or people decide to write about it (obvious
that it's not release).
Just another 2 cents. In the mean time as Pierre says, there's still time
better spent noting down ideas for php.next.
Cheers.
Jonny.
Jonny Stirling wrote (on 03/04/2014):
At the moment, PHP.next doesn't really exist. What it will eventually be
called is surely a question for when we get around to distributing it, e.g.
shortly before first alpha. Until then (imo) there is no benefit to
deciding this now, or in the near future. Any use of names PHP6 or PHP7 or
even PHP8 before it exists is just going to continue the issues brought up
here in the future.That being the case, perhaps keeping the naming as simply php.next (branch
included) or using basic code names is the way to go.
I think this is actually quite a good idea. Firstly, it's the approach
being taken by some very high-profile projects recently, e.g. Microsoft
with Internet Explorer and I think Office. ECMAScript is an even closer
example: they did in fact skip a version when ECMAScript 4 was
abandoned, and "ECMAScript Harmony" was intended to be a release, but
became a roadmap across several, with "ES.next" being used to refer to
drafts of what features should land next.
Not that we have to do what everyone else does, but for those worried we
might "look like clowns" by daring to call it anything other than 6: we
are not alone.
Secondly, if we rename the page on the wiki to "PHP.next", or some other
code name, then this entire discussion can be shunted off, and we can
concentrate on what will be in the release. It may even be that, like
the ECMAScript committee, we find ourselves with tentative plans for a
PHP.next.next as well, as we narrow in on a realistic set of goals.
Regards,
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
2014-04-03 12:35 GMT+03:00 Pierre Joye pierre.php@gmail.com:
Hi Eli,
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.It is amazing to see that the most important thing in php-next is the
version number.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something elseIt hurts us. We were pathetic in our previous attempt for php 6, which
by the way was never released nor existed. We will be clowns by
skipping a version for some totally random reasons.Let put things in perspective:
- PHP 6-dev (the -dev part is important here) was killed 5 years ago
(or maybe more, did not check the exact time)- book about it have been released, how it is remotely related to us
is a mistery but let consider them as valid...
. Current idea is to get 6 out in ~ two years. Making these books
like 7-8 years old by the time php 6 will be released
. The communication about the development of php 6 will outcome any
legacy results in google/bing and other
. The couple of books still on sale are likely to be removed (if not
already, as I never saw one except ebook, and really, anyone buying 5
years old book in tech ...)So in short, I really do not care about this version number. However I
do care about the success of PHP, how we are seen from the outside (in
case you do not realize it, we are bad, whether it is true or not is
irrelevant). I think we should go with the logical and mathematical
step, 5+1=6. The arguments about possible confusions refer to the few
who ever bought these books or read some 5 years old blog posts. Know
what? They will most likely focus on what we will communicate about
this next major version now and here, they care about what will
actually be done rather than some pointless marketing related moves.
The same kind of moves were often rejected or disregarded because
"nothing to do with php.net". The same argument applies.On the other hand, I find disturbing than almost everyone
participating in this thread did not post a single reply, feedback, a
single idea or proposal about what we should do for the next major
release. Priorities anyone?As a reminder, this is what we have so far,
https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6I won't reply or argue in this thread or any other related to the
version number, this is totally irrelevant to me and only confirms the
total lack of understanding of our users needs right now. I apologize
for that or if I offend anyone here, but this mail targets us all, me
included. Time to focus on what matters and do not spend precious time
on such ridiculous discussions.Cheers,
Pierre
@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org
--
/signed
+1
Agreed
Whatever other form of agreement there is.
This is getting ridiculous. You know, ultimately php.net is all about PHP
and it's development and not about stupid hosters, ignorant users and bad
bussuinesses that still are on PHP 5.1 or even PHP 4.4.
This "caring too much" caused quite a lot of grief in past years. Look at
the Wordpress and mysql_* bul*it that still prevents from removing legacy
deprecated stuff, that is in that state for years now. Still, it drags it's
feet and meddles with the PHP development.
Ultimately, I do not understand that over the top protective behaviour
about some mythical users that do not read internet, learn PHP from books
(hey, I have a whole lot of opinion on this one, I actually spent 2 full
years teaching WEB development to people - PHP, JS, some frameworks and
basic *nix - in private school) and do get into programming in PHP by some
weird ways. You know what? NOTHING WILL HELP THOSE PEOPLE! Whatever you
name next PHP, whatever PR you do - it does not matter to those people -
they will still code in procedural style, not doing any kind of app design
and probably tons of notices, errors and all those other mistakes that will
get a decent developer into hell.
Been there, done that, worked with that kind of people - they do not learn,
they are stuck in their own world and only thing that pushes them to raise
their head out into the world is when something breaks and they can't fix
it - and even then, they look for the most easy, nasty and shitty solution,
use it and never bother again.
So, everyone, just drop ip. Versioning conventions are universal, after
version 5 comes version 6. And that's it.
P.S. About the MariaDB 5 -> MariaDB 10 - their situation is unique and they
decided that they need the distinction, because MariaDB is not backwards
compatible in some cases with MySQL 5.6 anymore if you use some specific
functionality. Also, the difference feature wise became too big and they
just had to make the distinction (I talked with Monty personally on this at
a conference I was organizing). Yes, it's a precedent, but it also has a
set of very unique and difficult circumstances that warranted such a move.
In case of PHP it does not comes close.
Versioning conventions are universal, after
version 5 comes version 6. And that's it.
Actually, they're pretty varied. For instance, there's the "odd is
experimental, even is stable" system followed until recently by the
Linux kernel, and by GNOME and related projects; there's Ubuntu's
"version numbers" which are actually Year.Month, but expressed in a way
that they sort numerically, and other projects which simply use a full
YMD date string, sometimes followed by a patch number or letter.
Then there are the myriad projects which use some form of x.y, or x.y.z,
or x.y.z.a numbering, but without any notion of "Semantic Versioning",
often changing their policy over time (see e.g. Mozilla Firefox). PHP
itself may be trying to follow the "Semantic Versioning" concept closer
with 5.5 and 5.6, but since 5.3 and 5.4 were, between them, a large part
of PHP 6, it's hardly a shining example of internal consistency.
P.S. About the MariaDB 5 -> MariaDB 10 - their situation is unique and they
decided that they need the distinction, because MariaDB is not backwards
compatible in some cases with MySQL 5.6 anymore if you use some specific
functionality.
You mean, unique apart from the dozens of other well-known projects
which have made similar decisions over the years, for various reasons?
SWuch as:
- Word for Windows - from 2.0 to 6.0, in a later-abandoned effort to
unify it with Word for Mac - Windows NT - started at 3.5
- Netscape - version 5 skipped
- Java - version 1.4 was followed by 5.0, and thence 6 and 7
- ECMAScript - 4th Edition drafts were abandoned, and the number
skipped; the 5th Edition was a much less ambitious successor to the 3rd
Edition - Winamp - version 3 followed by 5, marketed as "2 + 3"
- Slackware Linux - jumped from 4 to 7
These are just a few example that came to my mind, or were mentioned on
a Wikipedia page I glanced at. They all had their reasons, often to do
with marketing, but if nothing else, I hope they counter any claim that
PHP would be in any way unusual if it were to skip a version number.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the version skip being "just
marketing", if that's what some people's objections come down to. It's
not like we're going to completely invent a number without any
explanation, like "Windows 7" :P
Regards,
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
- It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
- It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something else
It hurts us. We were pathetic in our previous attempt for php 6, which
by the way was never released nor existed. We will be clowns by
skipping a version for some totally random reasons.
Just a few cents from a long-time lurker: I see huge value in standing up, saying publicly that it has been recognised that mistakes were made, that lessons have been learned, and that everything is being done to minimise any potentially confusing fallout. Do you really think that your embarrassment over what happened (that’s how the above reads to me, sorry if that’s not what you meant) should be a factor in any way at all?
The main (and possibly only) mistake, as identified elsewhere in this thread, was naming PHP 6 as v6 before it was ready for release. I think there’s been enough leakage of features that are now associated with that name to make it reasonable to put the whole thing away and start fresh with PHP.next (likely PHP 7 by the time it’s ready for release). And anyone who thinks it matters whose fault it is should maybe think about whether it’s more important to assign blame or create a useful tool!
I also think it’s incredibly naive to believe that any level of publicity campaign could adequately get the message out that the PHP 6 that has been released bears no resemblance to the PHP 6 that has been in discussion for the past 10 years. Several people have eluded to what the focus of internals development "should" be, and regardless of what the technical goals are surely the overriding goal should be to create a tool that helps people get stuff done.
I’d happily wear clown make up for a month if I thought it would help even a handful of developers using my product avoid wasting time when it could have been avoided!
-Stuart
--
Stuart Dallas
3ft9 Ltd
http://3ft9.com/
Hello everyone. I've been hitting a lot of conferences recently, and
found myself having the same discussion with multiple members of the
community. And many of them have 'heavily encouraged me' to bring this
discussion up here. And Julien's recent PHP6 email, reminded me that I
hadn't done so.The short form is:
We should not name the next version of PHP: PHP6, for 2 reasons:
1. It will cause confusion in those least able to adapt
2. It costs us nothing, hurts us in no way, to name it something elseSo let me get into some more details...
Right now, unfortunately due to various issues that we won't go into.
There are a lot of books on the market, on shelves in bookstores here in
the US, and online, that talk about PHP6. A quick search for PHP6 on
Amazon, brings up 6 books in the first page of results alone.Yes, it sucks that this happened. Yes, it's stupid. Is it 'our'
(internals / core devs) fault? No. But the fact is that they exist,
and they are still out there.Now what is going to happen, when 'average jane PHP developer' out
there. Finds out that PHP6 is released. Or someone who is going to be
brand new to learning PHP, and wants to make sure they are learning the
latest version ... What happens when that person decides they should buy
a book to learn PHP6? They will go to their local bookstore, or they
will go onto Amazon.com. And they will search for PHP6 ... and they
will find all of these books.All of them being 100% completely incorrect. And not only useless to
these people, but actually damaging. Because these people relying on
the books to teach them what will be. Will think that they are being
taught proper PHP6. When it couldn't be further from the truth. (They
will be being taught PHP5.2-ish stuff, with unicode support that doesn't
exist).You might not think that people would be so easily deceived. I'm here
to say, that people will be. I'm amazed weekly, if not daily. How I
continue to run into people who have been programming PHP for ten
years. Who have never connected to the community. Who don't know about
any of the resources, people, community that exists out there. PHP runs
80% of the web, and the 'community' that we always talk about, is
pitifully small in light of that.There are 10's to 100's of thousands of PHP developers across the world,
who may be relying completely upon non-community sources. And who will
be directly confused by the naming of this product PHP6.Is that 'our' fault? No, not at all.
But should we care? Yes. I think we should. These exact same people,
are crucial to the ecosystem. We want to make it easy for people to
pick up the language new, easy for people to transition to the new
version. We want to make sure that if there is ANYTHING that we can do,
that might ease some confusion or pain points. We do so. In fact it's
why this group is SO adamant about not introducing non-backwards
compatible changes in minor releases. Because we don't want to impact
all of those millions of projects out there that people just need to work.And the fact is. This is a problem that we can solve right here. Right
now. With ZERO impact on us.It costs us nothing, and doesn't hurt us, at all, to simply name this
next release something else. By simply changing the name, we suddenly
resolve all potential future confusion, not only confusion that we will
visibly see on twitter, message boards, email lists, etc.But we will be able to alleviate the hidden confusion that we won't see
either (and which in turn, could hurt adoption of PHP6 as well).And I'll state again - It costs us nothing to just put a different name
on this.It's for exactly these reasons - Why I would urge this group to name the
next release something else. Call it PHP7 - Or call it anything else
that you want to: PHP-X, PHP 2014, PHP-A, PHP Leaping Leopard. That
part doesn't matter. What does matter is calling it something else, so
that confusion doesn't occur.Thank you for your time,
Eli
Frankly it is daft idea to outsmart authors of PHP books just because
they decided to write about PHP6. We need them as much as they need us
and it helps no one to out-maneuver them just for the sake of it.
The numbering system should continue as it is so that we don't alienate
users of PHP. Why do you guys want to confuse them bu inventing yet
another system?
Simplicity is the key to success of a product and it should be carried
on. The only time we should jump one number is when #13 is reached.
Apart from that the numbering system should remain as it is.
--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
Website: http://html-css.co.uk
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us
Good Guy wrote:
The numbering system should continue as it is so that we don't alienate users of
PHP. Why do you guys want to confuse them bu inventing yet another system?
I simply don't understand this argument ... there is no change to any system!
There IS substantial work already on PHP6 and all that it means is that all of
that historic work just needs a published release note that says 'Due to
problems with the original planning for PHP6 it has been skipped and a clean
branch created as PHP7'. That Original PHP6 was not released as planned is well
documented?
Then we cherry pick the material on the wiki and elsewhere that is ACTUALLY part
of a discussion on PHPNext so that when one searches - even using date filters -
one gets a nice clean view of the current discussions. Google has this annoying
habit of re-dating early articles when they get published via different routes
or quoted in later reviews and today it's still pulling historic
miss-information. Since the php website is now reliant on that flawed tool, we
have to design around it. This is simply a matter of making a move forward a lot
easier to manage given the documented history.
I don't see how that alienates anybody and it will certainly eliminate the pages
of dross currently being returned when reviewing material FOR PHPNext. And all
the published authors get a clean base to write the replacement books :(
Does anybody actually know just what parts of the original PHP6 roadmap have
actually now been back ported to PHP5 anyway? And what is left from the original
roadmap that would benefit from review even ten years on? And more important
what has been missed or is no longer relevant? I'm still missing just where PHP5
does not handle UTF-8 internally apart from the actual processing of strings?
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
Frankly it is daft idea to outsmart authors of PHP books just because
they decided to write about PHP6. We need them as much as they need
us and it helps no one to out-maneuver them just for the sake of it.The numbering system should continue as it is so that we don't
alienate users of PHP. Why do you guys want to confuse them bu
inventing yet another system?Simplicity is the key to success of a product and it should be carried
on. The only time we should jump one number is when #13 is reached.
Apart from that the numbering system should remain as it is.
Hey Good Guy - A quick response to your points.
-
Outsmarting Authors
First of all you do realize that 99% of the these situations, the
authors didn't pick those PHP6 titles right? The publishers did. The
authors that I have talked to wish that the publishers would please drop
those books. The authors don't WANT their name associated with the
incorrect books, but they have no rights due to the contracts.
And the publishers who are happy to keep the books for sale and in
print, right now, are going to be even more happy when we release PHP6,
and suddenly their book gets a huge spike in sales.
We won't be hurting any authors if we rename it, and in fact, by NOT
renaming it we will be helping the publishers, who are perpetuating this
very long standing issue. This isn't a case of 'someone jumped the gun
1 month ago'. This is a very long standing and unique situation due to
the circumstances that surround the now dead PHP6 branch. -
"Inventing another system"
Honestly we aren't going to alienate users of PHP by 'skipping 6'
and calling it 7. It's not inventing another system, it's just skipping
a number. Besides the fact that this has happened very frequently over
the last 20 some years in software, even mainstream software with far
less savvy customers, and it didn't manage to skuttle products... As
Zeev pointed out, it's simply an FAQ question, and answered. And as
Lester pointed out, it's not even changing the system at all. Because
we did have a PHP6, it turned out to be a dead product branch. So to
remove confusion the 'dead' PHP6 lives on in the release notes with an
explanation, and the next version released is 7 -
#13
This final argument highly confuses me. So you are arguing that
skipping 6 and going to 7 -- is a horrible idea and is going to confuse
all of our users. Even though there are many legitimate reasons for
doing so. Yet skipping 13 and going to 14, for purely superstitious
reasons, is encouraged? That makes no sense. If you feel that it's OK
to skip 13 and go to 14. Then you should have no argument against going
from 6 to 7.
Eli
--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
The only time we should jump one number is when #13 is reached.
I guess we should avoid a 6th patch to the 6th minor version of version
6 as well?
Oh, and if you're going for the superstition angle, we've already messed
up by not skipping version 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia
(Please tell me you were joking/trolling?)
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 5:03 PM, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.comwrote:
The only time we should jump one number is when #13 is reached.
I guess we should avoid a 6th patch to the 6th minor version of version 6
as well?Oh, and if you're going for the superstition angle, we've already messed
up by not skipping version 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia(Please tell me you were joking/trolling?)
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]--
Wow, I didn't know that the number 4 has its very own phobia. This is why
people should subscribe to Internals! You learn something new every day.
With regard to versioning, I propose that we devise a complex algorithm to
determine future feature numbers. The algorithm should follow at least the
following rules:
- No prime numbers, UNLESS they're part of the Fibonacci sequence.
- The number "6" should be replaced with a smiley face, ":)", to avoid
invoking a satanic curse. - Multiply the version number by -1 times the number of bugs fixed in that
version. - Every version must be followed by ", Presented by Burger King." If we
do it enough times, they'll have to pay us eventually, then we won't have
to look for a corporate sponsor. - Minor version increments are 11-indexed and must be expressed in
hexadecimal. - Maintenance version increments are 5-indexed must be expressed in binary.
Now that that's settled, let's focus our attention on feature planning for
the upcoming PHP -:).C.101, Presented by Burger King.
--Kris