There are advantages to strict typing other than speed and safety. The
biggest compliant I hear from people asking for this is that weak hinting
often leads to bulkier code that is much more difficult to read,
particularly for someone who frequently switches between PHP and compiled
languages like C++ and C#.
Therefore, allowing for strict typing, i.e. leaving it to the discretion of
the code author, would not necessitate converting PHP into a compiled
language or require anything close to a fundamental rewrite. Furthermore,
it would allow for 100% backwards compatibility with existing code. This
would essentially make PHP more flexible, not less. We'd simply be adding
a new dimension to it that has been overwhelmingly requested from the
outside for many years.
--Kris
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Samuel Deal <samuel.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Going to Strict tying it's really a major paradign shift.
>
> To clarify my talk, When I say "strict typing", I'm talking about strict
> scalar check, variable definition or return type check.
> I'm ok with weak scalar type hinting.
>
>
> We have type hinting, yes, but it's a kind of syntaxtic sugar for :
> if(! arg1 instanceof MyClass){
> throw new exception("How are you using my work ?!!");
> }
> Any check we make slow our execution time.
> Before type hinting exists, we performed manualy this check, and it was
> verbose and slower than same check done by PHP native code.
>
>
> PHP is a script language. No compilation pass.
> In all cases, because someone made a bad use of a function, it will break
> at execution time.
> So type hinting and strict typing will not make our code safer or faster.
>
> We don't have to be ashamed of using a script language.
> Thanks to this, we can do metaprogramming.
> for instance, __call() allow us to do really awesome things
> If we look at other script languages, Python, Ruby, Perl or Javascript
> doesn't have srtict typing nor type hinting.
>
> I love static languages.
> I write code in C, C++, Java, As3 and C#.
> They have good performance, stric typing, static checks at compilation
> time.
> But it's a different technology, and their philosophy is allowed only
> because there's a compilation phase.
>
> That's why when facebook, with HHVM, tryied to make a faster PHP, it can
> only work with a subset of what is realy PHP.
> For this reason, it's really really difficult to make javascript a fast
> language (v8 and sipermonkey are very complex).
> For the same reason, now Adobe decide to give up with the dynamic part of
> ActionScript (wich was limited compared to PHP) to speed up their VM.
>
> So I think going to scrict typing only make sense if we want a static
> language, with compilation phase and performances gains due.
> But it would be more than a major compatibility.
> A lot of things will be not only be broken, but will be impossible.
>
> Finally, it would be a so big engine change that it would be better to
> restart the engine from scratch.
> And if we start from scratch without backward compatibility, is this still
> PHP ?
>
> And is there a language which already works as expected? Java ?
>
> Just my 0.02$
>
> --
> Samuel DEAL
> samuel.d...@gmail.com
>
>
