Re: Re: Improving PHP's type system

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 10:00:41AM +0100, Tony Marston wrote: > I agree with Zeev 100%. There are too many people out there who are > trying to make the language more complicated than it need be just to > prove how clever they are. The aim of any language should be to > enable programmers to do complicated things in a simple way, and not > to do simple things in a complicated way. I disagree. My way of looking at it is that adding some features(eg the current type specification/checking) adds to the simplicity because I can say what types I want and don't need to write code to check the types of argument received by a function (etc). Why would I want to check: because I value robustness, ie not having my code fall over because, somehow, a wrong type slips by unnoticed. Does that make quick/simple programming not possible in PHP ? No: I will put the most of the robustness work into libraries/classes that I write and want to reuse - the simple programs that use them don't necessarily be written to the same standard. > I have been programming for over 30 years, so in no way can I be > classed as a newbie. PHP is my favourite language because of its > simplicity. I started with PHP 4, and although I have upgraded to > PHP 5 I refuse to use any of the "clever" additions which have been > made to PHP 5 simply because I can achieve what I need to achieve > WITHOUT using any of those additions. > > I will not be making use of any changes that are made to the > language in order to handle typed variables for the simple reason > that PHP was specifically designed to be an untyped language, and in > the 13+ years that I have been programming with PHP I have found > that to be more of an advantage than a hindrance. Type juggling is useful, but somewhere you do need to check your input. I doubt that we will agree, but we don't need to: we prob have different aims and goals. There is no reason that PHP cannot satisfy both of us. -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php #include <std_disclaimer.h>