Re: Re: Deprecate PHP's short open tags, again

On 13 August 2019 19:19:42 BST, Olumide Samson <hisamsonolu@gmail.com> wrote: >Not sure what the counter argument is really driving at. >So, because some people are using a function or an unworthy directive, >then >there can't be a major change in that aspect? That's not what anyone is saying. What people are saying is that we shouldn't just make changes because we feel like it; there should be a strong reason for the change. Most people probably even agree up to that point, but disagree with whether the reasons given for this particular case are strong enough. >Not sure where this project is headed, some will want a code to stay >because they want easy version upgrade(must everyone upgrade? ) and >those >who want to shake things up won't be allowed to do so. I find it really frustrating that this feature, that most people had probably forgotten even existed, has somehow been taken as an example of the pressing need for change. If you propose something that will actually take the language forward, but needs to break a few things along the way, then you might have a valid complaint about lack of vision. But there is no feature which will be unlocked by removing short tags; no big selling point we can talk about at conferences; it will either work, or it won't, and most people's code will not be affected one way or the other. Most people's wishlists for PHP, even some of the posts in this thread, include things like generics, union types, enums, CoW classes/structs, annotations. To my knowledge, none of those is currently being blocked by the need for backwards compatibility; most are being blocked because they're hard to design, and hard to implement. The best counterargument I can give against "cleaning up" is that it takes energy away from actual new features, even if it's just the mental energy of monitoring and responding to long threads like this one. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]