Re: Quick sanity check ...

Hi! > The question here is how type strictness would benefit the language. > I agree with you on most parts. But still... if the class was declared > like this: > > class CancelOutdatedOrdersDTO { > public int $olderThan; > } > > Wouldn't that be solved entirely? Code would crash (through a No of course not. The specific instance of error you had *this time* may be solved. The problem won't be. You still have to deal with: - How this object is initialized? How you ensure it *is* initialized and that initialization is correct (0 is perfectly valid int)? - How this object is unserialized and what if unserialized data has non-integer or 0 or __wakeup has a bug? - What if some code just writes 0 into $olderThan - you declared it as public so anybody could mess with it? - What if some code mixes signed and unsigned and you get negative number instead of positive? - What if this code runs on 32-bit but receives 64-bit value and truncates it? And so on, and so forth, I probably missed more possibilities than I mentioned. Declaring a type does not magically free one from correct design and testing, and typed programs have bugs as much as non-typed ones (maybe slightly different ones). Actually, one of the harms relying on it would be the same problem safe_mode had - it's full of holes, it's not safe and it creates wrong expectations. If you just write "int" and expect your problems to magically go away - you're in for big and bad surprises. -- Stas Malyshev smalyshev@gmail.com