On 12/19/2008 17:39, Robin Burchell wrote:
Ugh. Apparantly I forgot to CC the list on those last two mails..
Sorry. Pasted so others stay in on the conversation:
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM, troels knak-nielsen<troel...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
That's an interesting mail, expresses a viewpoint I hadn't considered,
so, thanks for that.
However: If PHP provides such a set in stone opinion on how things
should be done, then why does it support, for example, provide class
vs functional programming paradigms - both to a first degree level?
(the mysqli extension is a very good example of what I mean here).
As I have seen it, PHP is one of the best of all tools: it provides
the features that many different programmers wish to use, and allows
them to use it. It doesn't restrict itself to any single spectrum of
programming, and I think that robustness is one reason it has
flourished, and continues to do so well into the future.
I see this as just another logical extension of that philosophy: you
see this as being "not the PHP way", whilst I see it as the polar
opposite: enabling programmers to do things as they wish, which I have
always thought was very much the PHP way :)
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On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Nathan Rixham<nrix...@gmail.com> wrote:
because all of those current declarations would no longer work on the new
version of php which implemented such change..? and I'm assuming it would be
a much bigger change to the php internals than adding in an optional type
after the method params..?
They would continue to work, because (you seem to be missing this
point of what I am suggesting) - 'function' would just mean a return
of a variant type (i.e. the current behaviour of not caring what it
is, and not touching it in any way
Whether or not it is a large change I am not qualified to suggest; I
haven't yet done too extensive a digging into the internals.
Actually functional programming [1] is a different beast than what you
are referring to, which is called procedural programming [2]. In that
regard, a database interface like mysqli is hardly functional.
Sorry if I've hijacked the discussion somehow.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programming
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