PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 7, 2020 15:52 UTC (Fri) by excors (subscriber, #95769)
In reply to: PHP struggles with attributes syntax by flewellyn
Parent article: PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Bikeshedding is when you spend a lot of time discussing a trivial problem and ignoring a big, complex, important problem (like the nuclear power plant that the bikeshed belongs to). When designing a programming language, I don't think syntax discussion can ever be bikeshedding: syntax *is* one of the big, complex, important problems in language design. Getting it wrong can have a major impact on readability, maintainability, learnability, aesthetic appeal, etc, and can create whole classes of bugs that simply don't exist in languages with better syntax, and can influence the design of every other feature that is later added to the language. It deserves a lot of discussion and careful thought over every detail.

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PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 7, 2020 20:08 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (3 responses)

I would say arguing over attributes syntax while just brushing through a JIT that helps 3.5% on Wordpress fits your description quite well, really. (Said JIT vote was 50–2.)

PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 7, 2020 20:28 UTC (Fri) by coogle (guest, #138507) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd be interested in a link to the data behind the 3.5% improvement of WordPress with JIT. When it comes to JIT for PHP in general though, I think it's important to remember the RFC itself described it as pretty simplistic JIT and way far behind other JIT implementations for other languages. It's a first cut, a foundational effort. I'm certain over time past 8.0 it will continue to be improved and hopefully have a more dramatic impact on key PHP codebases like WordPress.

PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 7, 2020 21:20 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

The 3.5% number is on the RFC page: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/jit

As for being a first cut; yes indeed, and a dead-end foundation is much worse than no foundation.

PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 8, 2020 5:45 UTC (Sat) by iteratedlateralus (guest, #102183) [Link]

In my experience, Wordpress suffers from two things: 1) PHP Devs notoriously dislike it, and 2) The hooks system is potentially very frustrating to work with.

PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 20, 2020 1:16 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

That's just wrong. Syntax very much *is* the bike shed, because the important part is semantics.

PHP struggles with attributes syntax

Posted Aug 20, 2020 1:17 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

I can guarantee you that no software project in the world ever failed because of this kind of trivial syntactic differences.