On Sat, Jun 29, 2024, at 12:56, Mike Schinkel wrote: > >> Most of it sounds completely impractical to apply in retrospect to an >> existing one with millions of users - apart from the bits we actually >> already have, like points 3 and 6. >> >> > You say it is impractical, you claim millions of users, but you don't address > why the specific features are impractical. > > They are no more impractical than any other new language features PHP has > added in recent years (and I am not being critical of what has been added, to > be clear.)
So far, nobody has shown how it is practical -- that is on the person proposing the RFC. Ideally, this would be it, you show why it is useful, how to use it, etc. But it is also political. You need to show why people would use it, why people would rewrite their entire application to use it (if the RFC calls for it), and so far, nobody has shown that other than "there are packages!" > >> Rather than looking at languages which have done things completely >> differently, >> >> >> >> >> > "Completely" here is a leading word used in that context. > > There is nothing "completely" different about JavaScript, or Go for that > matter. All three of JS, Go, and PHP are descendants of C. I cringed at this. There is no direct lineage though they borrow come syntax from C, and if you want to push it, you might as well say they're descendants of B which borrowed syntax from BCPL which borrowed syntax from CPL which borrowed it's syntax from ALGOL... eh, no, these languages are not related to each other. Inspired, maybe. > > We are not talking about APL, Whitespace, Befunge, or Intercal, after all. > >> I think it would be more useful to look for inspiration for ones which are >> *similar* to PHP's approach, but have extra features. >> >> >> >> >> so there might be good and bad experiences we can learn from there, as well. >> And I'm sure there are others that are much less alien than JS or Go. > > > I would argue JS and maybe Go is a lot more similar to PHP than Java or C#. > But then the alienness is in the eye of the beholder. No, PHP and Go are nothing like each other. With a bit of finangling, you can actually port JavaScript line-for-line to PHP, but not the other way around. If anything, JavaScript is more like PHP than PHP is more like JavaScript. > > You claimed you don't know JS or Go, but I don't know Java or C#, at least > not enough to be proficient in them. >> > > That said, I really don't think gatekeeping based on the genetics of a > language is the path to improving it. Instead I think objectively evaluating > the specifics of the proposed features is the better path. And to me each of > those things I mentioned stand on their own and can be justified, as needed. I don't see any gate-keeping here, just people challenging assumptions and pushing for the feature to be better than it is currently being proposed. — Rob
