On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 6:22 PM Chase Peeler <chasepee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 1:05 PM Matthew Brown <matthewmatt...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > that don't fundamentally change the language > > > > > > There's clearly a big disagreement about whether this is a fundamental > > change or not. > > > > Preventing something that the entire field of software engineering frowns > > upon (and that most PHP developers avoid like the plague) doesn't seem > like > > a *fundamental* change. > > > > > I would argue that this is exactly such a change. The flexibility of PHP > has often been touted as a feature and something that sets it apart. > Whether that's good or bad is, frankly, irrelevant. There are valid reasons > for not always initializing variables or array keys. The major valid reason i see is creating a bolierplate or being lazy to initialize the variable with even null or similar null-type depending on its context. It might be a bad reason in your opinion, but others view it as perfectly > acceptable. Who are those "others"? I think he(me included) is also one of those "others" that view it as bad programming style... For 20 years people have developed code based on that feature. It was never > considered an error, and often not even considered bad practice. It was considered an error, that's why you were been warned or given notice that "Hey dude, you're writing a bad code here @ line 1427(l4zy) of already-problematic-file.php" and only if we want to remove Notice,Warning or Error in the language. > To suddenly define it as such is the exact definition of a fundamental > change > to the language itself. > Fundamental is always "fundamental", i think there's no good definition for it in this context, so leave fundamental changes out of this discussion as something totally bad been cleaned up is a fundamental change and something new but not used right and changed to be used right is also fundamental... > > What if Java suddenly said that all properties are suddenly private, and > can only be accessed through getter/setter methods? The fact that you > should make properties private and use such methods is a practice that was > drilled into me from day one. Would that justify making such a change, > though? > > I'm not sure how this relates, i think Java would let you see the good or bad, it's up to you to see or not from their view, let the majority move forward and don't be a stopping stone in moving this language past the 1993 bondage(needle-haystack, inconsistent naming and many issues we couldn't count)...
