Re: [RFC Proposal] var keyword deprecation/removal

On 2/25/2016 10:26 AM, Tony Marston wrote: >> Science shows that it is harmful, let's clean it up! > > Your "proof" is not scientific, it is just personal opinion. There is no > evidence that use of the "var" keyword is harmful in any way. I think the diverged from talking about the "var" keyword in particular towards duplication in general a long time ago. However, I still think that DRY is empirically proven. > Where is your proof? You say "not used by a major part of the community" > which means that it is still being used by a minor part, but exactly how > "minor"? I don't see why I should be forced to make a totally > unnecessary change to vast numbers of my scripts just to fall in line > with your personal opinions. It is true that I did not provide this proof because Colin O'Dell did claim this fact in the very initial message of this thread and I believe him. > There is no reason to remove it from ANY version of PHP. It does no > harm, it would take effort to take it out and amend the documentation, > but for what benefit? I stick to the main reason I gave, DRY. Duplication needs to be managed and removing it removes the maintenance burden. > Change for change's sake is never a good idea. I have been developing in > several languages for 40 years, and I can tell you point blank that > while programmers expect new features to be added they do NOT expect old > features to disappear. Once a piece of code has been written and has > proved to work as designed it is expected to work with all future > versions. The only exception to this is to plug holes in security. This > is called "forwards compatibility", and was a major selling point of all > my previous languages. If developers fear that they will have to rewrite > huge swathes of code each time a new version is released they will > quickly give up and move to a "professional" language which offers long > term stability. I did not say that we should change for change's sake. I only stated that trying hard to prevent change by all means is wrong. Again, this diverged away from the "var" keyword alone a long time ago and was more a general statement. TL;DR Thanks for yet another aggressive/provocative email, I stick to my +1. However, you all have valid points to keep it. -- Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger

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