Re: [RFC] [Discussion] Short Closures

Hey: On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Stanislav Malyshev <smalyshev@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi! > >> I agree that at first it will feel a little bit weird, especially >> given that PHP in general lacks syntactic sugar (we still don't have a >> short-hand to initialize stdclass objects). We introduced [] back in >> 5.4, and largely it has made readability FAR better (despite some >> people saying it wouldn't at the time). > > That doesn't mean now we have to drop all keywords and switch to > write-only style. Even [] was somewhat controversial, though it is the > most elementary syntax construct. Function call is in no way elementary > - it has non-trivial structure, and obscuring this structure by removing > keywords does not help readability. > >> tool isn't always appropriate in all situations. You can craft code >> that makes this new syntax look unreadable. But you can craft code > > The problem is not that I can. The problem is that anybody can, and a > lot of people would, unwittingly, once the expressions get more complex > that $x+1. > >> that makes this look far more readable. >> >> Example: >> >> function partial(callable $cb) { >> return function($left) use ($cb) { >> return function($right) use ($cb, $left) { >> return $cb($left, $right); >> }; >> }; >> } > > It is a bit verbose but pretty clear what's going on here - function > returns a function that returns a function, and you can easily track > which variable goes where and how it gets to the end. > >> >> vs: >> >> function partial(callable $cb) { >> return $left ~> $right ~> $cb($left, $right); >> } > > It looks very pretty as the ASCII art, and no entry-level programmer > would have any idea at all what these arrows actually do and how this > thing is supposed to work. At least not without studying the manual very > closely for extended time. That's exactly the problem. People start > writing overly clever code that looks so pretty - and then other people > are left scratching their heads about what actually is happening there. > That's what I mean by write-only code. > >> It may look weird at first, but consider that's because you're not >> used to the syntax. To me, the top is far harder to follow because of > > Of course, with enough training you can get fluent even in APL. I know > people that are. But PHP is supposed to be on the other end of the > spectrum. > >> the shear number of tokens to follow, not to mention that I need to >> pay attention to the use-blocks which may or may not be importing >> certain variables. The bottom reads exactly how I would expect it to. > > That's because you wrote it and know in advance what it is supposed to > do. It's not a good test of readability. +1, that is what readable(guessable) means..... thanks > -- > Stas Malyshev > smalyshev@gmail.com > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- Xinchen Hui @Laruence http://www.laruence.com/