Re: Resurrecting the Function Renaming Thread

Zeev Suraski wrote: > At 21:41 7/2/2001, Andrei Zmievski wrote: [snip] > >I'd just like to mention that PHP seems to be doing fine as far as new > >users are concerned - look at the growth rate.. So, the argument > >of "new users will not _get_ the language" doesn't seem too strong to > >me. > > I'm about half way through reading this thread, and there's one thing I > *completely* agree with. > > I think one question we should be asking ourselves is whether we're trying > to fix something that is not broken. It may *appear* broken, but in > practice, where it matters, it's actually doing exceptionally well (growth > wise, and the fact that the #1 advantage of PHP I'm hearing from users is > that it's remarkably easy to learn and use). I agree that PHP is a very nice language and that it is very easy to use. My take on the naming issue is that it is easy to fix the names that are certainly wrong. I don't see much harm in doing this. As I have stated any number of times, anything that touches the core can wait 'til we know what we are doing with the simpler stuff. Also, while I am pushing quite hard on this issue, my major concern is to see that it is more closed than it was left last time. I believe that the changes should be made. However, I don't think that it is a make or break issue. Given the opportunity, I would rather be working on the bug system, the QA site or the main website. However, other people have these things under control* - I need to wait for their success or failure before I move ahead on any of these things. * Well, not the QA site, but I want to see what happens to the main site before working on it. > Zak - I did say that *if* we decide to add aliases, they should be > meaningful, and not just the old names with underscores. This is still a > conditional though, I'm not sure at all on whether we should add aliases > or not. I understand - I felt that I should push the issue until we reached a definitive group consensus. If the vote was yes, then I am prepared to spearhead the work. If the vote is no, then I will move on to the next outstanding issue that I can. I think this is a good idea... YMMV :) --zak