Kris,

Responses aren't inline.  I'll go back to the mode that most other core devs 
are employing right now and ignore it for the waste of time that it is.  I 
won't ignore it if it ever comes to a vote, nor will the others.

Troll away.

Zeev


From: Kris Craig [mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 12:16 AM
To: Zeev Suraski
Cc: John Crenshaw; Richard Lynch; internals@lists.php.net
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting

Responses inline.

--Kris

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Zeev Suraski 
<z...@zend.com<mailto:z...@zend.com>> wrote:
Kris,

If we've agreed that strict typing is bad, why is it even showing on the 
discussion here?  Calling it 'firm' or 'strong' doesn't make a difference.  If 
it errors out or throws an exception (which BTW is out of the question for a 
language feature), it's strict typing, regardless of naming.

That is a form of cognitive dissonance, a logical fallacy.  More colloquially 
known as an "either or argument."

Everyone agrees that strict C-like typing is not tenable.  We've moved past 
that and what's being proposed now does not rise to that level.


Thanks for pointing me to the voting procedure that I helped author.

You're welcome.

Are you essentially telling us we all have to waste our time again just because 
6 months have passed?

Yes.  Though given how many people have shown an interest in this thread, I 
would challenge your assertion that it is a waste of time.  If you feel as 
though it's a waste of your time, then don't waste your time.  But that doesn't 
give you the right to demand that we cease talking about it just because you 
don't think it's a worthy discussion.

  That alone might be reason enough to turn the OR in there into an AND and 
shut down that loophole.

You're free to introduce a new RFC for that, but don't be surprised when I and 
probably a number of others campaign heavily and tirelessly against it.  I 
don't think most people would agree with such a totalitarian approach designed 
to silence dissenting views from being introduced and discussed.
  The rationale behind that time period was to allow for cases where there was 
an 'almost' majority.  Here, the proposal stands no chance.  The only reason 
you're not seeing anybody from the core devs responding is because they're 
tired of the Nth incarnation of the same discussion happening again with zero 
new ideas.

Please refer to the Wikipedia link I posted above pertaining to "weasel words."

Just because a conceptually similar proposal failed two years ago doesn't mean 
the discussion we're having now won't have any support.


If you can show why it makes sense to revive the discussion based on the 2nd 
bullet, that is:
The author(s) make substantial changes to the proposal. While it's impossible 
to put clear definitions on what constitutes 'substantial' changes, they should 
be material enough so that they'll significantly effect the outcome of another 
vote.

... then it's worth discussing.  Nothing I saw in this thread falls under that 
category, as far as I can tell.

I disagree.  A number of ideas have been put forth that differ from previous 
proposals.  Just because you don't think they differ enough does not mean you 
can unilaterally declare that this discussion must end.  Besides, as you said, 
such a standard would be completely arbitrary and open to interpretation.  It 
would ultimately be something that would have to come down to a vote (unless 
you're planning on being the one who gets to decide for the rest of us what's 
substantial and what's not), which would render the whole argument pointless 
anyway, since it would essentially be a vote on whether or not we should have a 
vote.  That's how the United States Congress typically operates, and we all 
know how effective they are....

Let's put it to rest.

This issue isn't going away.  Again, we've already addressed this in previous 
posts.  You may not want to discuss it, and there may be people who share your 
sentiment, but that does not give you the authority to shut down this 
conversation or declare that you're going to change the RFC rules so that we 
can't vote on this.  If that's not what you were proposing, then please accept 
my apologies for the misunderstanding.  Either way, I've already promised to 
push back hard against any efforts to silence the discussion this time around, 
and I intend to honor that promise.

I am still in favor of ultimately moving this conversation to a separate 
location if people like Zeev are just tired of having this in their inboxes.  
Plus it would give those of us who are actually interested in this a place to 
brainstorm without old fear tactics periodically being reintroduced in an 
effort to derail the conversation.  I'll investigate such options as soon as I 
have some spare moments.  It's been a busy week.  =)

Zeev

From: Kris Craig [mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com<mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 11:18 PM
To: Zeev Suraski
Cc: John Crenshaw; Richard Lynch; 
internals@lists.php.net<mailto:internals@lists.php.net>

Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting

....Aaaaaand here we go again.  Every few days it seems, somebody jumps into 
this thread and reminds us that strict typing is a bad idea, despite the fact 
that we've already all agreed on that point about a gazillion times.

As for past RFC's, I would recommend you review the voting procedure.  If an 
RFC is rejected, the policy does allow it to be re-introduced after 6 months.  
While we're not actually reviving a previously rejected RFC since we're 
discussing a different approach, even if you were to apply that to the broader 
conceptual level, this discussion is still perfectly kosher since, as you said, 
that rejection happened 1.5 years ago (3 times the required period).


Sorry if my tone is a bit frustrated, but I think we're all a bit annoyed at 
this repetitive pattern by now.  We start finding common ground and making 
progress, then somebody new makes a post about the evils of strict typing and 
questioning why we're talking about this, obviously completely ignoring the 
fact that we've already addressed this numerous times.  So Zeev, while I 
appreciate your interest and welcome you to participate, please take another 
look at the previous posts in this thread, because we have already addressed 
your concerns ad nauseum and have since moved-on.  I do not want us to get 
dragged back into grinding our wheels in the mud on that.  Thank you for your 
understanding.

--Kris
On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Zeev Suraski 
<z...@zend.com<mailto:z...@zend.com>> wrote:
Guys,

I've followed this thread silently so far, and I'm wondering what changed over 
the last ~1.5years that warrants a new discussion into that matter.
I think the previous discussion ended with a pretty clear directive that strict 
typing has no place in PHP.  Rasmus said about the proposal back then "They 
aren't hints.  It is strict typing and in its current form I would ask you guys 
not to call the 5.4 release PHP." - which put in one sentence what several 
others (myself included) put in many more words.  So the 
'strong'/'firm'/'strict'/whatnot version of what is being discussed here, 
should probably not be discussed at all.  We've been through it, and rejected 
it.

Back when we rejected strict typing, we also 'killed' the other RFC[*] that was 
born out of that old discussion - the 'weak' auto-conversion RFC.  If I recall 
correctly, it was for two reasons - one was that the proponents of the strict 
typing said they'll firmly object weak typing, and the other is that this RFC 
still had some issues that didn't seem obvious to hammer out (main one I recall 
is that sticking to PHP's standard type juggling rules meant that feature 
wasn't very useful, and we didn't feel very comfortable introducing brand new 
type juggling rules just for that feature).  If you want to revive that 
discussion, I suggest you take a look at that RFC - confine yourselves to only 
work on stuff that stands a chance to get accepted (no strict typing) - and try 
to come up with good answers to the open questions.  No point in redoing the 
whole discussion from scratch.

Zeev

[*]https://wiki.php.net/rfc/typecheckingstrictandweak

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kris Craig [mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com<mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com>]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:58 PM
> To: John Crenshaw
> Cc: Richard Lynch; internals@lists.php.net<mailto:internals@lists.php.net>
> Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting
>
> Err sorry yes John is correct.  I wasn't paying close enough attention.
>
> Here's *my* vision of how that progression would look:
>
> $a = "1";  // Current kosher unchanged.
> weak int $a = "1"; // Converts to 1.  No error thrown.
> strong int $a = "1"; // Converts to 1.  May or may not throw an error (I'm 
> still on
> the fence).
>
> $a = "blah"; // Current kosher unchanged.
> weak int $a = "blah"; // Throws E_x error level.
> strong int $a = "blah"; // Throws E_y error level.
>
>
> Where E_y > E_x.
>
> --Kris
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 1:52 PM, John Crenshaw
> <johncrens...@priacta.com<mailto:johncrens...@priacta.com>>wrote:
>
> > No, In the example given there's an error on int $a = "1". There
> > should be no error because this juggles fine.
> >
> > John Crenshaw
> > Priacta, inc.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kris Craig [mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com<mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com>]
> > Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:47 PM
> > To: Richard Lynch
> > Cc: internals@lists.php.net<mailto:internals@lists.php.net>
> > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting
> >
> > @Richard That's fairly close to what I'm thinking, yes.  But there
> > seems to be a diverse range of ideas bouncing around right now, so at
> > present it's all in flux.
> >
> > --Kris
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Richard Lynch 
> > <c...@l-i-e.com<mailto:c...@l-i-e.com>> wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, February 27, 2012 4:34 pm, Kris Craig wrote:
> > > > I think this is the main reason for differentiating between "strong"
> > > > (or
> > > > whatever word is appropriate) and "weak."  The developer may very
> > > > well want their script to blow-up in such a case.
> > >
> > > I believe I actually "get it" now...
> > >
> > > You want 3 layers:
> > >
> > > $a = "1"; //current kosher unchanged weak int $a = "1"; // some E_x
> > > error level strong int $a = "1"; // some E_y error level where E_y >
> > > E_x
> > >
> > > Is that a correct summation?
> > >
> > > --
> > > brain cancer update:
> > > http://richardlynch.blogspot.com/search/label/brain%20tumor
> > > Donate:
> > >
> > > https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id
> > > =F
> > > S9NLTNEEKWBE
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe,
> > > visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
> > >
> > >
> >


Reply via email to