Hey Stephen
> You don't *have to* specify types at all. If you want to use PHP without
> verifying/requiring types, thats your prerogative, but given the recent
> improvements to allow scalar type hinting, I think it’s a mistake to say that
> *any* use of type hints is “not recommended”.
Sure you don’t but then you loose all the benefits of specifying types. We want
typing but only if we don’t have to specify types all over the place. I really
dislike having to add PHPDocs everywhere just to get some proper
autocompletions.
> I'm not sure if you've mixed up your terms of if I'm too tired but I don't
> understand what you mean here. The short arrow function *is* the callee, and
> that’s where you’re suggesting we shouldn’t use type hints.
Sorry, that was confusing. I was thinking of a situation like this one:
```Swift
func fetchUsers(callback: ([User]) -> Void) {
...
}
```
So, the callee (`fetchUsers`) defines what the provided closure must look like.
The caller, on the other hand, doesn’t have to specify that again as you’re
just repeating yourself.
```Swift
fetchUsers { user in
// `user` is inferred to be a `User` object
}
```
So I don’t think the burden of providing typing information should be on the
caller providing the closure.
> The whole issue with that is that using a pipe character could make things
> much less clear/readable if the already established use of pipe for “type
> unions” (currently used in multi-catch) were to be implemented for general
> type hint usage.
>
> Note: I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s *much* less readable, and
> any “solution” just adds more characters, which is apparently the only reason
> to not use function($foo) => $foo in the first place.
But again, that’s personal preference. I like short a precise and think it’s
more readable. Not everyone’s the same.
> For most people readability isn't just about the number of characters.
A lot of the time it is. Brains are very good at recognising patterns, they
don’t need large keywords for that.
As for me, I think it just adds clutter to the actual logic that I’m interested
in.
