> On Mar 10, 2020, at 12:24 AM, Matthew Brown <matthewmatt...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I would not expect someone who’s never written a line of code to understand > attributes/decorators, just as I wouldn’t expect them to understand traits, > interfaces, or really any of the things one should know about in order to > write and maintain production-ready PHP code.
Of course not. But that does not mean we should embrace more obtuse approaches when there are options to consider that are more approachable. As for traits, interfaces, etc. people may not understand them but with so much open code available to learn from it does not mean they will not be exposed to them when trying to learn code in PHP. And using keywords that can help aid in comprehension and memory devices has makes more sense than to use magic sigils that a reader will have to translate into meaning. > If you want someone to get excited about programming, PHP is probably not the > best language for them to start with. There are a ton of great interactive > online tools (e.g. Glitch, CodePen) that make it easy to get started without > having to worry about installing PHP or mastering the language’s syntax. Your comment ignores that are large percentage of PHP developers come to PHP through WordPress, and (almost?) none of them are seeking out Glitch, CodePen, etc. because they are not on most WordPress people's radar. Be aware that the leader of WordPress has preached "Learn Javascript deeply" a few years ago, and many in the WordPress community are now ignoring PHP and viewing that the majority of new innovation and development should be in Javascript; a direction I find very painful. Rather than make PHP even more obtuse to would-be programmers, I would like to see it become as approachable as possible, without of course making it less capable for advanced programmers. Using keywords instead of symbol certainly seems to satisfy both goals. Now that I stated my view and you have stated yours, let us please put this to rest and let others discuss and/or make their own choices on which approach makes sense. Please let us not continue to bikeshed this topic ala https://xkcd.com/386/ -Mike -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
