On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 11:25 PM Zeev Suraski <z...@php.net> wrote: > > > On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 12:02 AM Nikita Popov <nikita....@gmail.com> wrote: > >> This is basically what I have been advocating for a while now already, >> somewhat hidden between all the other noise of the "namespace-scoped >> declares" thread. The model I would like to follow are Rust editions ( >> https://doc.rust-lang.org/edition-guide/editions/index.html). In PHP >> right now, the way to do this technically would be based on a >> declare(edition=2020) in every file. I was hoping to make this a >> per-package declaration instead, but haven't found the perfect way to do >> this right now. >> > > I think it's similar, but not quite the same, at least as far as what I > understood from what you were saying on that thread (I just reread it). > First, I think it's important we don't only focus on what we're going to > change - but also on what we're going to keep. The motivation should not > be slow eventual migration from one codebase to another. We would have > two, long-term supported codebases - a lot closer to C and C++ than to > different editions of a single language. The distance between them would > be quite substantial from the get-go - and will likely grow farther as time > goes by, similarly to the situation with C and C++. >
I think this part is unrealistic from a simple manpower perspective. We have something like ~2 full time developers working on PHP. Even if you can rally some additional interest around this idea, I don't think we have the resources to create a *substantially* different language in any reasonable amount of time. Doing feature additions and changes to PHP is Hard. Even simple changes require a fair bit of design and engineering effort to integrate with the large complexity of the existing language. This would not change for a hypothetical P++, because we still need to interoperate with PHP. Even if I agreed with the idea (which I'm pretty skeptical about in this particular form), I really don't think we have the resources to do something like this. Nikita > Also - I think that we should do our very best to get this "P++" right the > first time, as opposed to iterate on it and release editions that provide a > steady stream of change and breakage. Of course - we can add new features > and evolve existing ones - but this should be a lot more similar to the > mini versions / feature releases we currently have. > > It's certainly similar in concept, but not quite the same. > > Zeev > > >
