Stas,
It is a recurring theme because it's true. You are right that every
> language needs a vision, and PHP's vision is being simple and practical
> and focused on the web. PHP is what people use to get their first site
> off the ground. PHP is what a web designer learns when he/she wants to
> go into programming. PHP is what a random Joe uses when he needs to whip
> up a page and he's in "do it yourself" mind. PHP is what you expect
> everybody to be able to handle, and everything to be able to run. It is
> not to serve everybody, every use case and every possible need. Yes, we
> try to extend the boundaries and do clever things - but sometimes we
> have to make a choice. You can not be everything to everybody. And if
> the choice between some complicated use-case that will be used by maybe
> 1% of the users and even then will be buried in the guts of some huge
> library and simplicity and accessibility of the language - I choose the
> latter every time. Library writers are smart, they can work around it
> and nobody but them will see it anyway. But turning the language into
> Java wannabe would affect all the users. And most of them don't need
> that, in my opinion.
>
You just proved my point with your reply. PHP doesn't have a vision. The
two people in this thread who have provided what they thought were visions
don't agree. And that's a problem.
Rasmus: "A general purpose scripting language with a focus on web
development"
You: "being simple and practical and focused on the web"
While they both have "web" in them, they provide very different goals and
metrics with which to gauge contributions by. And that's the entire point
of my call for a single, consistent and official vision...
> That doesn't mean we should not improve and go forward. We should. But
> we should do it consistent with yes - the vision of the language being
> accessible and not overly complex. If you want rigid OO-pattern-driven
> language - you have Java. If you want full mathematics power with full
> mathematics complexity - you got Scala and Haskell and so on. There's
> nothing wrong with them. They are just not PHP and PHP is not them. They
> have their playground and we have ours. Having vision does mean
> sometimes having to say "PHP is not X" and reject stuff because of that.
Again, "PHP is not X" is rhetoric. Pure and simple. You could use that to
reject *any* feature that we didn't explicitly invent. Which is the
problem. I didn't hear that come up on the generators discussion ("PHP is
not Python"). And that's why it's not useful as an argument. When
discussing a specific feature, it's not a useful stick to measure by. And
that's why it's a bad argument to put forth.
I have feedback to provide and I provide it all the time. But if by
> "solid" you mean agreeing with you, you're not getting that.
Yes you do! And quite often you do it in a very good and constructive way.
I applaud that. But you also provide it in a very destructive way at times.
And that's what I'm asking you to please stop. For example:
http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=135083835232016&w=2
While that's your opinion, the way you present it does not do anyone any
good.
We had the vision for quite a long time, even though we never
> officially stated it.
>
Then it's not a vision in the context that I'm suggesting.
> > 1. "PHP Should Strive To Be A Full Featured Object Oriented Language".
>
> This is not a good vision, since nobody knows what is "full featured",
> or everybody knows and it is different for everybody.
It was an example of a possible vision statement. Nothing more. I wasn't
even suggesting it was a good one, or one we should adopt. Just something
to show as an example.
> > field for contributions and discussions. Rather than every developer
> > playing for themselves and saying "I hope this never happens", it puts
> > it in the context of "I don't believe this fits our vision". Note the
> > difference in tone between them.
>
> If it makes it easier, please replace "I hope this never happens" with
> "I don't believe this fits our vision" in my last response.
I only think that makes sense if we have an official, stated vision. But
yes, that would make it far easier.
> > It's an ongoing joke about how abusive and unproductive the internals
> > list is. I for one am sick of it. And rather than keeping ignoring it
>
> This is coming from a man that just told me to shut up? Did I ever tell
> you to shut up? Did I publicly question your competence or assumed you
> don't know anything about the matter discussed? You complain about the
> list being abusive and yet you are the one who distributes abuse, as it
> appears to me. I agree, this needs to be fixed. Please be part of the
> solution, not of the problem.
I didn't tell you to shut up. I said to shut up with the rhetoric. There's
a difference.
I value your opinions. I really do. I quite often disagree, but that's fine
(good actually).
What I don't value at all are the BS remarks about "PHP is not java" and "I
never want to see this in PHP". They don't do any good but to dilute
constructive discussions. The reply thread that I quoted your line from has
some very good contributions by you to it. But that last one did not need
to be sent, as it provided absolutely nothing constructive to the post.
Am I guilty of being abusive? Absolutely. But I hope the abusiveness that I
portray at least tries to be constructive (if it's not always, I'm sorry).
I used that line to open this thread because it was something I am
passionate about. And because I see it as proof of the disconnect between
the people in the discussions. That's why I wrote this thread how I did.
One thing I will apologize for is the following note:
> you're completely and utterly out of touch with the reality of modern
development.
While I do believe that you are out of touch with what's been going on in
the user-land of PHP trends over the past 5 years, the way I wrote it was
definitely not constraining to that area. So I'm sorry for making it sound
like you're separated from reality...
Anthony
