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

Experiences

[truthsearch]

It's a huge step forward for OO development in PHP.

BUT it's still got all the crud of PHP4. For those transitioning from PHP4 objects one great feature is the new warning when using the older style of classes. However all of those things people find quirky about PHP4 still exist. For example, now you can force a function parameter to be a certain type of object, but not a basic type. You still can't even fully overload a function.

My view is that it's two steps forward and one step back. They need to consider deprecating features and making a php.ini option to not allow the use of any deprecated features.

Re:PHP

[DavidTC]

There are, I presume, plenty of other language-based cliques on /. , however the most vocal ones always seem to be the Perl-mongers. They're the ones who seem to pipe-up the most regardless of topic.

They are always upset when anyone chooses any other language for any purpose, because, in any touted feature of any language, you can do exactly the same thing almost exactly the same way in Perl, but better. That is not sarcasm, I am not being ironic, it is flatly true. Often you can literally cut-and-paste the code.

Other languages have an easy way to do something, and a correct way to do something, and a stupid way to do something you get from newbies. You can usually figure out what any line talking about in thirty seconds once you grasp the syntax. (Which, admittedly, can take a bit of time, like with COBOL and Lisp, for examples of languages with semi-odd syntaxes that are not in any other way alike.)

Perl has all those ways, and one hundred others. This is not an exaggeration. You can write BASIC in Perl, you can write PHP in Perl, you can write C in Perl, you can write Lisp in Perl, you can write C++ in Perl.

You sit two programmers of a medium skill level and have them write asm, and they will write identical code. You have them write C, and they will write near-identical code. You have them write PHP, and they will be roughly the same. You have them write Perl, and sometimes one of them will come up with at least one line that the other doesn't immediately recognize, because one of them basically writes PHP in Perl, and the other basically writes C++ in Perl.

This isn't limited to Perl. Programmers often write C in C++, or PHP 4 in PHP 5. When languages get new, better ways to do something, you end up with an 'old style' and a 'new style' and people can upgrade the language itself without upgrading the style they write in. Other people work on their codebase and put in 'new' stuff, and the old guys are baffled.

Perl is merely the only language that has ever deliberately done this. Perl is like being able to write in any programming style you want, at any time, using a semi-consistent syntax, along with features that no other language likes, like $_. Perl fanatics are under the mistaken impression this is somehow a feature, as opposed to making it fucking impossible to ever read any Perl code unless it happens to be written in the style you know.