On 22/06/2016 16:58, Rasmus Schultz wrote:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Lester Caine <les...@lsces.co.uk> wrote:
Having worked in other gradually-typed languages like Dart and
Typescript
Out of curiosity, do these languages perform the type analysis at
compilation, or at run-time? I'm trying to collate some examples of how
other languages have approached the problem.
PHP feels crippled on this point - it's gradually-typed,
but inconsistently so, and inconsistency is the worst kind of evil you
can have in any programming language.
I absolutely agree, we need a plan for how to introduce a consistent
gradual typing system. But this RFC is not that plan.
The learning curve for new users isn't increased by the introduction
of property type-hints, it's *decreased*
Except that this proposal doesn't actually make the language
consistently type-checked. It adds a few more special cases where you
can use type hints, with slightly different behaviour.
To carry on your imagined conversation:
- ooh, I can type-hint properties now!
- wait, what does this error mean? why would I not be able to assign
this property by reference?
- oh, because the variable holding the reference would have to be
type-hinted; how do I do that?
- oh, I can't...
and then in addition they need to go and learn about
php-doc and offline inspection tools and IDEs and so forth.
Interestingly, this is the direction that Hack and Python have both
apparently chosen to enshrine - the syntax is baked into the language,
but not actually enforced by the standard compiler or run-time in any
way. Indeed, "gradual typing" as defined by Jeremy Siek only really
makes sense in the context of static analysis.
Sorry, for the rant, but anti-type-hints is just anti-consistency. We
have type-hints, now let's please take another step towards finishing
the job!
Taking lots of little steps "towards" a goal that we've never even
properly defined is exactly what leads to *inconsistency* in the language.
I think a number of people are not "anti-type-hints", they just don't
agree with this particular implementation.
Regards,
--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]
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