On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Joe Watkins <pthre...@pthreads.org> wrote:

> Morning Dmitry,
>
>    > I made this check(s) to be invariant. You may like to do this
> differently...
>
>    I think this is what everyone expects, isn't it ?
>
>    I did omit to mention that part ...
>
>    > RFC doesn't define how uninitialized nullable typed properties should
> behave.
>
>   It does:
>
>    > *Nullable typed properties will not raise an exception when accessed
> before initialization.*
>

I don't agree with this choice, for three reasons:

a) This unnecessarily restricts what can be expressed in the type system.
With these semantics it will no longer be possible to express that a
property should be nullable, but have no default value. This situation is
not uncommon in practice, in particular anytime you have a nullable
constructor argument, you will want the corresponding property to be
nullable without a default, to ensure that it is explicitly initialized.

b) This directly contradicts the meaning of ?Type for parameters. For
parameters ?Type means that it's a nullable parameter **without a default
value**. That's the very thing that distinguishes it from the Type $prop =
null syntax. And now ?Type for properties should mean the exact opposite?

c) If you view this in a larger scope of union types, this *special case*
becomes even more weird. Why does the particular union Type|null get
special treatment, while all other unions don't? Or is it actually not
specific to "null", but to single value types? E.g. if we also allowed
Type|false, would that also receive an implicit false default value? What
about the type null|false? Does that get an implicit default, and if so,
which? I realize this is not quite in scope for type properties, but the
further evolution of the type system should be kept in mind.

Please keep things consistent: If there is not default, there is no default.

Nikita

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