Re: [RFC] Reclassifying engine warnings

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 8:20 PM Matthew Brown <matthewmatthew@gmail.com> wrote: > We log 1 in every 1000 notices, and yes - being notice-free is a goal – > though not one with any particular timeline at the moment, because we can > just ignore the problem. I look forward to not being able to ignore the > problem. When was this goal set? Was there effort that went into it? My point is this: In a codebase where being notice-free isn't a goal - and/or where code patterns that rely on the documented behavior of how PHP variables are initialized as well as behave in read scenarios (with or without the silence operator) - I think you're going to find a lot of such instances, probably more so than in a company that made an informed decision to not allow it and gradually work to remove existing code that uses it. For many, this is not considered technical debt - but rather - using the language *as intended*. Using the language in a way that is sanctioned and considered valid - alongside other ways which are also considered valid (e.g. a notice-free codebase). While I understand what you're saying when you say that you look forward to not being able to ignore the problem, it sounds like a fairly weak argument for forcing everyone else - many of whom don't consider this to be a problem at all - to change their code. Instead, if this bothers you, make an informed decision to change - there's enough tooling to do that today with reasonable effort. Or support the ability to flip a switch that will granularly force you to fix these particular issues. Forcing all users to work in a certain way, because some of the users who want to work that way can't bring themselves to do it - doesn't sound very sensible IMHO. I was hoping that the glaring obviousness of how other languages tackled similar issues (Perl, JS) would go a longer way. It should. Zeev