On 03/06/2026 23:49, Matthew Brown wrote:
> assuming this survey had a representative sample of PHP users ...
and that nobody uses both PHPStan and Psalm at the same time ... we
would get at best 44% of users employing SA tools. A far cry from the
90% number I’m constantly told
In that same survey [1], 68% of respondents say they use PhpStorm, and
static analysis is one of the /main /reasons people use PhpStorm.
I don't think this is equivalent. PhpStorm only complains if it can
prove a type is wrong; and in my experience, there are plenty of people
who happily ignore the errors it does flag.
To replace the safety of run-time checks, you need a tool that only
allows code into production if it can prove that no type errors would
happen.
That's a different question from "who would a nice syntax for generics
be useful for" - I think it would be *useful* even for people coding in
a very simple editor, because it makes the code more expressive. But it
would be considerably *less useful* if that extra information couldn't
actually be trusted because nothing enforced it.
--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
