Hey Nicolas,
On 29.1.2026 17:36:11, Nicolas Grekas wrote:
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. You raise valid points about
type precision and PHPDoc annotations being harder to express with CPP.
I've added a "Design Considerations" section to the RFC acknowledging
these tradeoffs and clarifying when traditional declaration remains
preferable (type narrowing, detailed annotations, complex
initialization) vs. when CPP + reassignment fits well (simple
transformations like trim/lowercase, validation with fallback).
The key point is: this RFC adds an option, it doesn't mandate any
style. If "final at declaration" clarity matters for a specific
property, traditional declaration remains available.
I do generally sympathize with Claudes viewpoint here.
While it's true that the RFC only adds a way how to write code, it also
removes the currently valid assumption, that, whenever a readonly
property is declared in a constructor arg, the arg will be exactly
identical to the passed value.
I will likely vote abstain on this RFC. I'm on the fence between "we
should have this" (I can see that not repeating the type and variable
name has some benefits) and "this muddies the readonly semantics".
Bob
