Re: Optional pre-compiler for PHP8?

> On Oct 27, 2019, at 11:20 PM, Mark Randall <marandall@php.net> wrote: > > On 27/10/2019 23:56, Mike Schinkel wrote: >> 2. Allowing PHP to continue to meet the needs of new/less-skilled programmers and/or people >> who want a more productive language for smaller projects that do not need or want all the >> enterprisey type-safe features. > > This concept of type safety being an enterprise feature needs to die. I was not trying to take any kind of position by calling it "enterprisey," I just needed a descriptive term and I thought that I had heard others on this list refer to it that way. We could call it something else. What do you propose? > Types are a way of preventing your program from getting into states that you don't expect > it to be in, so you don't have to worry about handling them in the first place. > > Scalars, and strict types would have saved me _so much_ time when I started trying to learn > PHP. For the record, I too try to program as strictly as a language will allow. But I am also aware that PHP has been a godsend for people who want to program but are newer to programming — or program very infrequently — and who struggle to get a program to just work, even when their programming language is super forgiving. Many of those same people would just give up if they had to program in a strict fashion before they collect the experience needed to develope the necessary skills to program in a strict fashion. I know this because I was a programming trainer for many years and I have watched people struggle with things that were just dead obvious to me. But long ago I was like them too, so I have empathy for them and their deserve to be empowered to write useful programs even their their skill level is not high. Hence the desire for a descriptive term. -Mike P.S. I've also run across lazy programmers who program full time but have no desire to get better. And I have fired many of them too. I have no empathy for them.