Going Dynamic with PHP

Five-Oh writes to tell us that IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article about the OO advantages of PHP V's new features. From the article: "PHP V5's new object-oriented programming features have raised the level of functionality in this popular language significantly. Learn how to use the dynamic features of PHP V5 to create objects that bend to fit your needs."

Comments

OOP

[onion2k]

I'm a fan of using objects in the right place .. but to suggest they increase the functionality of a language is simply wrong. They allow for better (well, different) organisation of code, easier reuse, and improved encapsulation over procedural or functional coding styles, but they don't actually allow you to do anything that can't be done using any other approach. The functionality of the language remains the same.

Re:OOP

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I don't want to start an OOP war, but am just suggesting that people not use objects just because somebody says to (unless they are your boss and order you).

I am with you on this one, although, unlike you, I used to be swept up at one time in all the early OO hype to a degree (back in the Smalltalk days - which by the way is probably the only coherent OO environment), only to realise, by experience, that it was for the most part just that: unsubstantiated hype. Object Orientation has applications, notably in situations close to its original aims of simulation of physical universe (as in the Simula language which started it all), which in modern software is found in things like PC games. But this paradigm has been overused, abused and stretched beyond its breaking point to try to cover all possible cases, no matter how ill fitting. And in the process it has consistently failed to deliver on most of its promises (other then to pad pockets of various charlatans and OO "framework, IDE, grill and taco stand" makers). My experience has thought me that contrary to what OOP priests wish us to believe, "complexity hiding" (usually by masking it by more OO-gunk complexity) is not the answer to reusability, cooperative maintenance and so on. The answer is: simplicity. That is the most maintainable code is the one which can be fully understood, with ease, by the programmer. OOP does not do that. In fact it introduces a whole new gamut of problems dealing with the hidden workings of pyramidal heaps of classes found in any OOP "framework", each with its own weird quirks and inconsistencies, from which you are supposed to "derrive" your own, as long as you adhere to a million of unwritten and poorly documented rules of use of these, supposedly, "reusable" and "extensible" components. Not to mention that it actively encourages creation of massive, incomprehensible class jungles as one can easily see in places like the JDK.

Speaking of PHP, its success can be attributed to its simplicity, ease of use and short learning curve. If they keep continuing to "innovate" new piles of ever more trendy crap into the language, it will soon (already is?) lose this advantage. It won't be long before someone comes up with another simple server-side language to replace the morass and the enthusiatic crowds will move onto this new "lighning fast, low footprint" language and begin to "improve it". Rinse, repeat.

Re:OOP

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Let me take this silly argument to its full comical potential:

If you're a programmer, I guarantee that you're using SEP (Spiritual Extrusion Programming) even if you don't use a SEP language.

Consider the Unix read() function, which can read from any file descriptor: regular file, block or character special, socket, and so on. If you were to write such a function in C, you'd write some code to determine the underlying type of descriptor. Then, based on that type, you'd call a helper function - read_file(), read_special(), read_socket() - to perform the actual read. Guess what? That's SEP. The file descriptor is the Spititual Manifestation of a Concept. The code at the top of read() is determining the object type (or Spiritual Element). And the helper functions are Spiritual Invocations. If this is a big project, odds are you'll put all the helper functions for sockets in socket.c, for files in file.c, and so on. And there we have Spiritual Encapsulation (of the namespace variety) too.

As noted many times, you can write an SEP in any language. It's just easier to do it in a language that's designed for it.

And so on, etc.

Newsflash: all of the concepts you describe are 1) long in existence before your favourite paradigm arrived on the scene so that you can try to contort them into it, and 2) can be interpreted ad infinitum with any of the millions of "paradigms" one can concoct on the spot. That is because your paradigm is merely a perspective and not an universal (and only) truth. The whole point of abstract formulations, such as computer software, is that they can conform to nearly infinite number of perspectives and can be projected onto the real, physical universe in an equally large number of ways, which is what makes this whole Information Technology thing so powerful.

But I fear that long after OOP has been relegated to the dusty bin of history, some ctr2sprt of the future will still argue about how you are really always writing "Quantum Parallax" code, even if you are you are not ...

Not The Best Choice For Maintainable Code

[tres]

From the article:

Dynamic objects have a lot of power, but they also carry significant risk. First, the complexity of classes increases tremendously when you start writing magic methods. These classes are harder to understand, debug, and maintain. In addition, as integrated development environments (IDEs) become more intelligent, they may experience problems with dynamic classes such as these because when they look up methods on a class, they won't find them.

This is what I was thinking the entire time I was reading the article. I mean, it's one thing to have to whip up some small project for yourself, it's another to build a project that is maintainable by a group of people.

I'd bet that Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike (The Practice of Programming) would probably recommend against using it. It doesn't provide for clarity, nor does it simplify, it just makes things "easier" for the guy that writes the original code.

Kinda Like Ruby

[pkulak]

So, it's got some of the features of Ruby now, plus a whole lot of crap dragged in from PHP 3 and 4 inluding that crazy mishmash of a function library? Boy, sign me up.

Any fool can code Perl...

[iBod]

Any fool can code Perl, just like any fool can code PHP/C/Java/VB/Smalltalk/COBOL etc. etc.

Anyone can write code, but very few can write really great code, that reduces the problem to the essential elements and uses the simplest approach to the problem, with the tool (i.e. language) in hand.

You can write shit code in ANY language. You can also write good code in ANY language (within the limitations of the language).

What you're saying is like "Spanish for People who can't speak in German".

It's nonsense and insulting at the same time.

You need to express yourself or solve the problem within the framework of the language you have.

You might choose a different language for a particular task, but if the language is a given, a good poet (or programmer) will make the best of it.

A better language doesn't make one a better programmer (or poet).

Re:Experiences

[Tenareth]

Yeah, the inability to scale is the primary reason all the porn sites use it...

And why we have a lot of high traffic sites that have no issue with it...

Threading != Scalability. Threading is only needed if you do certain types of tasks that need it.

In programming, there is no silver bullet, there are lots of tools suited for different jobs, PHP fits in a lot of those places, Java in others, other languages elsewhere. Threading isn't a "Oh, I'll multithread it, that'll make it faster" type of magic button.

Re:PHP 4 V. 5

[masklinn]

Not enforcing Object Oriented programming is actually a very good thing, one of the few good things in PHP5.

Giving the option to use OOP (with a good object system, which PHP doesn't have) is good, forcing it on the poor user and preventing him to write as much as a line of code outside of a damn class is stupid, and is a god damn failure of both Java and C#.

While OOP is a good idea for some problem, others are better solved using more imperative or functional styles. That's why I much prefer Ruby or Python to Java: while they have great object models, they don't try to beat you with an ugly stick if you don't wrap every damn thing in a useless class that is only here because the language absolutely forbids you from doing otherwise.