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Features that I miss in PHP: - expressive type system with generics, union types, literal types, basically TypeScript. I can say "this function returns a strin

by DCoder 7y ago

Features that I miss in PHP: - expressive type system with generics, union types, literal types, basically TypeScript. I can say "this function returns a string" or "this function returns an array", but not "this function returns an array of strings". - specialized collection/hashmap data structures with good support across third-party libraries. Having one array() structure acting as both a sequence and an associative array at the same time is awful. - a templating solution similar to JSX. I am spoiled by TypeScript's ability to typecheck my HTML views along with other code.

simion314 7y ago
I am not trying to say PHP > TS, just wanted to let you know in case you still work with PHP codebase that you can get good enough type checks with PHPDoc, here is a good example for the case you mentioned , in Intellij the built in linter will mark as warnings when you use types wrong https://i.imgur.com/NqlAsTd.png https://i.imgur.com/NqlAsTd.png (zoom a bit out and sorry for the bad crop) About the array issue don't we have same situation with JS and TS where you don't have dictionaries or hashmaps in the standard library and you have to use array or object ? I like JSX too, maybe some PHP template would be made to copy JSX , but not all ages need to be that interactive and not all PHP code is rendering HTML, my current project uses angular1 for the frontend (it was something already created so there was no debate what tool to be used where I could have voiced an opinion). As a personal opinion I prefer react to angular because I don't like the angular magic compile stuff, I like that react components are JS functions and I can breakpoint into a render functions. I also done some side toy projects with TS, I like it and I hope it gets more popular so new projects would use it but I am worried that we could get a wave of front end languages and we will not have a standard great language but many non standard languages.
- DCoder 7y ago
  IntelliJ will detect cases like that, yes. But it is difficult and slow to get IntelliJ to inspect your whole project like `tsc` does. With PHPStan or such tools you can do that more easily, but they still have interop problems due to non-standard annotation syntax. Having native support for such type expressions would be much better. ES6 has Map and Array, which are perfectly sufficient and distinguishable from each other. PHP core only has array() which tries to do everything. You can use array() to build a collection or an associative array and you cannot force it to only behave as one of those. Even Zend's PHP certification contains questions about what happens if you try to push a value into an array that uses associative keys. This is a joke. I prefer React over Angular as well, but interactivity was not on my list of goals. I want a template syntax that combines valid markup, escaping by default, and TSX-style typechecking. Basically, I want XHP [0]. There is no other template engine for PHP that validates "values passed into this template" against "values used in this template" like TSX can, and no engine that ensures you're generating valid XML/HTML markup. I certainly agree that this is far less important than powerful types, but hey, one can dream :) [0]: https://github.com/hhvm/xhp-lib https://github.com/hhvm/xhp-lib
  - simion314 7y ago
    >ES6 has Map and Array, Bue ES6 is new, I never seen APIs that use Map , I often had to use an Object as dictionary and had to Google how to properly do it not to get extra keys and values from the Object.prototype. I am not trying to say that PHP is better then TS, but as far as type safety my PHP code with PHPDoc is better type checked then JS code with JSDoc (we are using ES5). I don't have experience with PHP rendering, but I assume you only have to escape unsafe input, don't have to escape markuup, have you tried twig, is it not safe https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x/filters/escape.html https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x/filters/escape.html ? I admit I like rendering with react, but I admit that reading a twig template is much simpler then reading JSX code (but I am condemned to use angular :-( ).
Zarel 7y ago
It looks like Facebook had your exact problem; you want Hack: https://hacklang.org https://hacklang.org It's based on PHP, but adds: Expressive type system with generics: https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/generic-types https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/generic-types Specialized collections: vec, dict, keyset https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/arrays https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/arrays Templating solution similar to JSX: XHP https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/XHP/some-basics https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/XHP/some-basics
- DCoder 7y ago
  I'm aware of Hack and it's quite nice, but I can't use it because a) my coworkers are … less open to new ideas … and will rightfully resist a "whole new language", whereas mgmt will see it as an attempt at "job security", and b) the biggest use-case for generics is third-party libraries (e.g. [0], [1], [2], [3]) which will never add support if this is not a core language feature. [0]: https://github.com/doctrine/collections https://github.com/doctrine/collections [1]: https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-option https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-option [2]: https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-collection https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-collection [3]: https://github.com/widmogrod/php-functional https://github.com/widmogrod/php-functional

by DCoder 7y ago

simion314 7y ago

I am not trying to say PHP > TS, just wanted to let you know in case you still work with PHP codebase that you can get good enough type checks with PHPDoc, here is a good example for the case you mentioned , in Intellij the built in linter will mark as warnings when you use types wrong https://i.imgur.com/NqlAsTd.png https://i.imgur.com/NqlAsTd.png (zoom a bit out and sorry for the bad crop) About the array issue don't we have same situation with JS and TS where you don't have dictionaries or hashmaps in the standard library and you have to use array or object ? I like JSX too, maybe some PHP template would be made to copy JSX , but not all ages need to be that interactive and not all PHP code is rendering HTML, my current project uses angular1 for the frontend (it was something already created so there was no debate what tool to be used where I could have voiced an opinion). As a personal opinion I prefer react to angular because I don't like the angular magic compile stuff, I like that react components are JS functions and I can breakpoint into a render functions. I also done some side toy projects with TS, I like it and I hope it gets more popular so new projects would use it but I am worried that we could get a wave of front end languages and we will not have a standard great language but many non standard languages.

DCoder 7y ago
IntelliJ will detect cases like that, yes. But it is difficult and slow to get IntelliJ to inspect your whole project like `tsc` does. With PHPStan or such tools you can do that more easily, but they still have interop problems due to non-standard annotation syntax. Having native support for such type expressions would be much better. ES6 has Map and Array, which are perfectly sufficient and distinguishable from each other. PHP core only has array() which tries to do everything. You can use array() to build a collection or an associative array and you cannot force it to only behave as one of those. Even Zend's PHP certification contains questions about what happens if you try to push a value into an array that uses associative keys. This is a joke. I prefer React over Angular as well, but interactivity was not on my list of goals. I want a template syntax that combines valid markup, escaping by default, and TSX-style typechecking. Basically, I want XHP [0]. There is no other template engine for PHP that validates "values passed into this template" against "values used in this template" like TSX can, and no engine that ensures you're generating valid XML/HTML markup. I certainly agree that this is far less important than powerful types, but hey, one can dream :) [0]: https://github.com/hhvm/xhp-lib https://github.com/hhvm/xhp-lib
- simion314 7y ago
  >ES6 has Map and Array, Bue ES6 is new, I never seen APIs that use Map , I often had to use an Object as dictionary and had to Google how to properly do it not to get extra keys and values from the Object.prototype. I am not trying to say that PHP is better then TS, but as far as type safety my PHP code with PHPDoc is better type checked then JS code with JSDoc (we are using ES5). I don't have experience with PHP rendering, but I assume you only have to escape unsafe input, don't have to escape markuup, have you tried twig, is it not safe https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x/filters/escape.html https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x/filters/escape.html ? I admit I like rendering with react, but I admit that reading a twig template is much simpler then reading JSX code (but I am condemned to use angular :-( ).

Zarel 7y ago

It looks like Facebook had your exact problem; you want Hack: https://hacklang.org https://hacklang.org It's based on PHP, but adds: Expressive type system with generics: https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/generic-types https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/generic-types Specialized collections: vec, dict, keyset https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/arrays https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/types/arrays Templating solution similar to JSX: XHP https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/XHP/some-basics https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/XHP/some-basics

DCoder 7y ago
I'm aware of Hack and it's quite nice, but I can't use it because a) my coworkers are … less open to new ideas … and will rightfully resist a "whole new language", whereas mgmt will see it as an attempt at "job security", and b) the biggest use-case for generics is third-party libraries (e.g. [0], [1], [2], [3]) which will never add support if this is not a core language feature. [0]: https://github.com/doctrine/collections https://github.com/doctrine/collections [1]: https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-option https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-option [2]: https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-collection https://github.com/schmittjoh/php-collection [3]: https://github.com/widmogrod/php-functional https://github.com/widmogrod/php-functional