3 ms·

I always wonder why PHP never seems to favour making breaking changes to keep things cleaner, if you aren't going to improve language constructs in a major vers

I always wonder why PHP never seems to favour making breaking changes to keep things cleaner, if you aren't going to improve language constructs in a major version, when will they be cleaned up?

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I think that post Python 3 nobody is going to do that. It would be interesting to see a fork which removed all the crud though. Something that was easy to use for the person doing occaisional web work or beginner but without the traps and pitfalls.
- echelon 6y ago
  Python 3 attempted too much change at once. The Python folks could have spread incremental rollout of the changes across several major version numbers and probably not have faced such slow adoption.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I thought the problem was carrying on support for 2.xx too long. Some people will never move on unless they are forced to.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    I'm not sure that they could have spread it out. I believe that was the point of Python 3. Still, PHP may end up in the exact same position Python was in for the last decade, if they tried to do a similar change. It could be worse of cause, they could end up like Perl 6 (now Raku), which makes Python 3 look like a successful transition in comparison.
  - pansa2 6y ago
    > Python 3 attempted too much change at once. Python 3 got this so, so wrong. It changed enough to break everyone's code, but not enough to make upgrading worthwhile. It could have changed more, or changed less - done right, either would have been better than what actually happened.
- tjpnz 6y ago
  >It would be interesting to see a fork which removed all the crud though. My understanding was that some of that already exists in Hack. Although it seems they might've not gone far enough.
- ThomWilhelm3 6y ago
  Good point :)
nikic 6y ago
PHP 8 has plenty of breaking changes (https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/08e6c209550a268500bbdef48c1b19494272e6e8/UPGRADING#L20 https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/08e6c209550a268500bbdef4...), mostly in the department of throwing errors more aggressively, and fixing some long-standing "features" (like 0 == "foobar" being true). But there's a budget to this, and you have to strike a balance between how much code you break and what benefit you get out it.
deleted 6y ago
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I always wonder why PHP never seems to favour making breaking changes to keep things cleaner, if you aren't going to improve language constructs in a major version, when will they be cleaned up?

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I think that post Python 3 nobody is going to do that. It would be interesting to see a fork which removed all the crud though. Something that was easy to use for the person doing occaisional web work or beginner but without the traps and pitfalls.

echelon 6y ago
Python 3 attempted too much change at once. The Python folks could have spread incremental rollout of the changes across several major version numbers and probably not have faced such slow adoption.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I thought the problem was carrying on support for 2.xx too long. Some people will never move on unless they are forced to.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  I'm not sure that they could have spread it out. I believe that was the point of Python 3. Still, PHP may end up in the exact same position Python was in for the last decade, if they tried to do a similar change. It could be worse of cause, they could end up like Perl 6 (now Raku), which makes Python 3 look like a successful transition in comparison.
- pansa2 6y ago
  > Python 3 attempted too much change at once. Python 3 got this so, so wrong. It changed enough to break everyone's code, but not enough to make upgrading worthwhile. It could have changed more, or changed less - done right, either would have been better than what actually happened.
tjpnz 6y ago
>It would be interesting to see a fork which removed all the crud though. My understanding was that some of that already exists in Hack. Although it seems they might've not gone far enough.
ThomWilhelm3 6y ago
Good point :)

nikic 6y ago

PHP 8 has plenty of breaking changes (https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/08e6c209550a268500bbdef48c1b19494272e6e8/UPGRADING#L20 https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/08e6c209550a268500bbdef4...), mostly in the department of throwing errors more aggressively, and fixing some long-standing "features" (like 0 == "foobar" being true). But there's a budget to this, and you have to strike a balance between how much code you break and what benefit you get out it.

deleted 6y ago

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