Re: [RFC Proposal] var keyword deprecation/removal

On 3/5/2016 2:33 PM, Lester Caine wrote: > On 05/03/16 11:26, Fleshgrinder wrote: >> PHP being a mess is still one of the most quoted arguments against PHP! >> >>>> Only if it results in an actual and measurable improvement. Changes for >>>> "purity" or "consistency" do NOT fall into this category. > >> This is your believe and you know that many people disagrees with you on >> this; you just commented on the "[RFC] Deprecations for PHP 7.1" thread >> and we have much more of those RFCs and threads. > > There are a number of schools of thought, one will say 'You don't have > to update your perfectly functional code', just use a version of PHP > that it will run on, so over 40% of users are 'stuck' with Php5.2/3 > either because they don't have the support to change or the need to > change. Much of that code was written by people who are no longer > involved or interested and so unless others pick up the baton, there > will be little progress. I still run 5.2 on sites simply because it's > simply uneconomic to change them. > > Now moving code forward, handling every warning and simply keeping code > running from version to version, one hits the problem that sites that > are reliant on older versions of PHP can't easily be run with newer > versions. I've managed to build a way around that problem by now running > php-fpm/nginx which allows me to actually run the same code across > multiple versions of PHP. But one has to be very careful about just what > is changed at each step, so in my book, unless there is some good > security reason to stop something working then it should remain for BC > reasons. > > Others are of the opinion that all current PHP code is a mess and my > reaction to that is ... well use a different language then! ... > expecting the vast majority of users to rename every function ( on of > the proposals for PHP7 ) or switch to a strictly typed method of working > is simply not going to happen, so I have no problem with people adding > new extensions which allow these different sytles of working as long as > the underlying procedural style of working is maintained in as BC a way > as possible, so things like 'var' and a number of the 7.1 deprecation > proposals simply destroy BC with little gain to a pure OO based version > of PHP anyway. > > I actually wonder what would have happened if there had been a stable > fork of PHP5.2 maintained, with security fixes, rather than the > piecemeal security fixes that are currently being applied on those > services that maintain PHP5.2/3 currently. But then again, we are talking about removal and real BC in 6 to 9 years and support for code that is already roughly 11 years old; so up to 20 years old then. I guess nobody would ever consider rewriting that code and instead simply write it anew. -- Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger

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