"Zeev Suraski" wrote in message
news:5b147e88-cc0a-4cbc-a49d-c7fe3bf55...@zend.com...
On 14 ????? 2016, at 7:14, Larry Garfield <la...@garfieldtech.com> wrote:
On 4/13/16 3:24 PM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
Hi!
May I suggest you the following article (more of a starting point into
Ceylon actually) regarding this topic:
There was a time where PHP was considered a good beginner's language.
Now it seems we want to pivot and target category theory PhDs instead?
:)
A language that is usable primarily by beginners will only be useful for
beginners. Non-beginners will shun it, or simply grow out of it and
leave.
A language that is usable only by PhDs will be useful only for PhDs.
Beginners won't be able to comprehend it.
A language that is usable by both beginners and PhDs, and can scale a
user from beginner to PhD within the same language, will be used by both.
Doing that is really hard. And really awesome. And the direction PHP has
been trending in recent years is in that direction. Which is pretty
danged awesome. :-)
I would argue that PHP was already doing that almost since inception. I
think we have ample evidence that we've been seeing a lot of different
types of usage - both beginners' and ultra advanced going on in PHP for
decades.
I would also argue that in recent years, the trending direction has been
focusing on the "PhDs", while neglecting the simplicity seekers (which I
wouldn't necessarily call beginners). Making PHP more and more about being
like yet-another-language, as opposed to one that tries to come up with
creative, simplified ways of solving problems.
Last, I'd argue that a language that tries to be everything for everybody
ends up being the "everything's and the kitchen sink", rather than
somethings that is truly suitable for everyone.
We also seemed to have dumped some of our fundamental working assumptions -
that have made PHP extremely successful to begin with:
- Emphasis on simplicity
- Adding optional features makes the language more complex regardless of
whether everyone uses them or not
It does seem as if we're trying to replicate other languages, relentlessly
trying to "fix" PHP, which has been and still is one of the most successful
languages out there - typically a lot more so than the languages we're
trying to replicate.
Zeev
I agree with Zeev 100%. There are too many people out there who are trying
to make the language more complicated than it need be just to prove how
clever they are. The aim of any language should be to enable programmers to
do complicated things in a simple way, and not to do simple things in a
complicated way.
I have been programming for over 30 years, so in no way can I be classed as
a newbie. PHP is my favourite language because of its simplicity. I started
with PHP 4, and although I have upgraded to PHP 5 I refuse to use any of the
"clever" additions which have been made to PHP 5 simply because I can
achieve what I need to achieve WITHOUT using any of those additions.
I will not be making use of any changes that are made to the language in
order to handle typed variables for the simple reason that PHP was
specifically designed to be an untyped language, and in the 13+ years that I
have been programming with PHP I have found that to be more of an advantage
than a hindrance.
--
Tony Marston
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