On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 9:35 AM Zeev Suraski <z...@php.net> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 3:17 PM Brent <bre...@stitcher.io> wrote: > > > I asked similar questions on Twitter, where Zeev replied the following: > > https://mobile.twitter.com/zeevs/status/1158688885658046464 > > > I want to add a bit of color to this tweet: > - Estimated # of developers using PHP is at around 10M. This is based on > some extrapolation from an EDS report from ~8 years ago that estimated that > number at >6M, and growth rates we've seen beforehand. > - Anecdotally, I've seen it used many times in non-distributable code over > the years - a lot more frequently than once per 100 users. > - Even if just 1% of the userbase uses short tags, that's ~100K. We can > call this one a guess, but I'd say it's an educated guess that there's well > above 1% of the PHP userbase that uses short tags. > > It feels like much of the counter arguments are based on guesses without > > any real data to point to. > > > I wouldn't say they're guesses, but extrapolations - for instance, the fact > I'm aware of many PHP frameworks and apps, and am not aware of any single > one that allows short tags - makes me feel fairly comfortable to make the > statement that "virtually all frameworks and apps designed for public > consumption disallow short tags". I can't preclude the possibility that > the fact that all of the apps and frameworks I'm aware of don't allow short > tags is a remarkable coincidence - or that there are countless ones I'm not > aware of that do allow short tags - but I think that my theory is a lot > more plausible. > > I work on an internal application. Even though portability is not a concern for anything we write, we haven't used short tags since it was rumored they were going to be removed in PHP 6 many years ago. That being said, this application has been in development since 2003. There is a large amount of legacy code written before I even started here, not to mention plenty of horrible code written after I did start in 2005 (this was my first job). As I mentioned in an email on this thread yesterday, most of our legacy code is "just leave it alone, it works" code. We are in the process of rewriting things, but, that takes time. We try and mess with the legacy code as little as possible. Something as simple as auto formatting with PhpStorm has broken things in the past - so I don't trust an automated tool to fix the short tags for me. Even if I'm the only person that has participated in this thread that has to maintain a codebase that consists of non-portable code with a large amount of short tags, that's still at least 1% of those that have participated in this thread, or one of its predecessors.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most of the people writing and/or maintaining "non-portable" code probably don't work for a company in the software development industry. When I want to upgrade PHP, I have to convince our leadership of the value of me spending a couple of weeks fixing BC breaks. I have to show why that is more valuable than spending time on the development of new functionality. The more time required to do an upgrade, the more likely it will get punted to a future date. I'm not against BC breaks in general - they are a necessary evil. However, it's important that the negative impact of that break is far outweighed by the positive value it brings. I'll leave it up to each of you to determine how positive of an impact removing short tags would bring. I can promise you, though, that the negative impact would be VERY large. Just because you don't personally have to maintain any code that uses short tags doesn't mean that there aren't other developers out there that do. Every BC break is going to lead to a subset of users that will decide to not upgrade as a result. It will also lead to a subset of users that will decide to use a different technology (node, .NET, python, etc.) going forward. Many BC breaks are worth that risk. Is this one of them? Many people have talked about the potential impacts of keeping short tags. I have yet to see anyone give an actual example where they have been negatively impacted by their existence. I've given you my personal story of how removing them will negatively impact my company. I welcome anyone that can provide an actual incident where the existence of short tags hurt them, or, the continued existence is likely to have a large negative impact on them in the future. > Zeev > -- Chase Peeler chasepee...@gmail.com
