Zeev: > I believe there's at least one company that effectively proved that the > opposite is true, there are probably many others. I don't see a problem in > having core technologies enabled by default. Purists can turn them off, > but there are a hell of a lot more average users than there are purists.
This is the crux of the issue, and in my not-so-humble opinion it isn't really understood by the group of developers I affectionately call the "#php.bugs mob". It seems to me that PHP is increasingly being modeled for a largely imaginary audience of purists. I say imaginary because I just can't see how droves of purists would've become involved with PHP in the first place. As Rasmus has repeatedly pointed out on this list, PHP was sold to its users by "Hello, <? echo $name ?>", and the ease of getting to that point. Each additional hoop they have to jump through to get there, be it installing libraries or tinkering with php.ini settings, will make them less interested, and, importantly, less excited about PHP. Everyone should keep that in mind when plotting the next step to purity. It's very easy to underestimate the consequences of, for example, disabling the short tags, making everything case sensitive or eliminating register_globals for good. The benefit might be language correctness, but the downside is much more quantifiable: frustrated users. At its core, this is also what bundling libxml is about. I'm not going to jump to conclusions for you, but please keep in mind the extreme importance of continued ease of use when deciding such issues. Marko -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
