Rasmus, > 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... > > They don't seem different to me, and the first one is the documented > statement that has been the first thing people see on http://php.net for > years and years. You can add "simple and practical" to mine or add > "general purpose" to the Stas one and it doesn't conflict in any way. >
There's a difference between a byline and a vision. But even deeper, the "vision" that you wrote widens the scope of PHP development into basically all possible directions, as long as Web Development is a focus. Stas's vision on the other hand narrows the scope quite significantly by focusing on simple and practical implementations. Here's an example of the difference. Let's say that an RFC came out to introducelist comprehentions PHP. According to your vision, that's completely on the table and is welcome. But Stas's stated vision would counter that because it's not "simple". And Stas's stated vision leads to things like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5034365 It is trivial to misinterpret (or perhaps not so mis) it as "we can't do anything complex, because think of the new people". What I'm proposing here is a stated vision that clarifies and sets a reasonably narrow vision for what development should do. I'm not saying it needs to be a 100% "we can do this but never that", but something to guide progress rather than the random thoughts of the people who just so happen be reading the discussion at the time. Something like: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ Something to guide discussion that's applicable primarily to PHP... Anthony
