Hi!
> This is where I think PHP may have broken us a little.
I think it's in no way "broken" to be able to easily match expectations,
like $foo++ always do what you meant without clunky boilerplate.
Also, if you think PHP is the only language I program in daily (and I
mean every day, except some weekends and vacations maybe) you're wrong
:) I have something to compare to, so what I say some things are easier
in PHP that's because I actually compared.
> I just asked a few non-PHP developers here what they expect "(function
> () { $a++; })()" to do, and they agreed it would be some sort of error.
> Got the same answer for "(function () { $a->bar = 5; })() ".
I see absolutely no reason for it. Maybe if you're a Java programmer who
never saw non-statically-typed non-B&D language - but that's not a
virtue we should be striving to emulate. If we have a tool that already
does things better and some people don't even know such tools are
possible, we should educate them, not break our tools so it would be
more comfortable fit to their experience.
> Indeed, anyone who's used another C-like language (JS, TS, Java, C# etc)
> is used to these things being errors, so it can be disorientating to see
I don't think having things just work instead of usual boilerplate that
you have to declare everything upfront and repeat even obvious things
numerous times is "disorienting" in any way. If you check how languages
that are alive evolve (like Java or C++, C is mostly fossilized these
days), even strict ones, you see they support more and more intuitive
approaches - like auto variables for example - which make things easier.
Because human should spend time thinking, not figuring out how to
satisfy a dumb compiler. That's the direction we should be moving to.
Not adding more errors and boilerplate in clear cases like $foo++.
--
Stas Malyshev
smalys...@gmail.com
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