Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PHP 8.4

php.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 337 posts

Re: PHP 8.4

#141

Post by signal11 »

ok123456 wrote: post #82
idoubtit wrote: post #22

I'm just a PHP programmer for work, but I worry about the orientation PHP has chosen. As French people say: better is the enemy of good (Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien). The two new language features bring a higher language complexity for dubious gains. I hope I won't have to work with these. Property hooks mean that some language magic will turn a property access into a call to methods. It implies that `$this->x` has…

This feature has been in C# since about 2.0, and it's been an overall positive. It reduces boilerplate and inconsistencies in different programmers doing the boiler-plate differently. It also gives static analysis tools semantic information about the structure of your classes. It can group pairs of methods that deal with the encapsulation of fields.

It’s interesting to consider the “magic” criticism in the context of languages like Zig, where devs actively want no hidden control flow. And Properties beyond simple { get; set; } are definitely hidden control flow.

But as you said — it’s been there in C# for a while and imho it’s a good abstraction over getters and setters. Even 2005-era IDEs could manage it fine, making it easy to access the property’s get/set code, so that it wasn’t really magical.

Maybe it’s a culture thing — most C# devs use IDEs. Not sure what PHP devs use, but I suspect tools like PhpStorm will make this easy to work with somehow. Devs using no-LSP editors will likely have a different view.

Re: PHP 8.4

#143

Post by owenpalmer »

7bit wrote: post #140
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the issues with creating a language that is easy to use (PHP, BASIC, and many modern languages), is that people who aren't good at programming, will use it. With predictable results. The difference between languages like PHP and more modern languages, is that the more modern languages have more airbags, for the bad code. It's still bad code, but it won't do as much damage. PHP is likely to be around for a long…

What a condescending point of view.

I don't think OP was trying to be condescending. Even if they were, they're still right. A lot of modern languages are designed with bad programmers in mind.

Re: PHP 8.4

#144

Post by patates »

chx wrote: post #65
idoubtit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hopefully hooks will be super short and this won't be a major issue. Even if a PHP project has a policy of short hooks, I think hooks impede clarity. public string $countryCode { set (string $countryCode) { $this->countryCode = strtoupper($countryCode); $this->country = nameCountry($this->countryCode); } get => ... In this short hook, the first line of the setter obviously uses the underlying property. But the seco…

> Does `$this->country =` use the setter even if it's in a hook (but not a `country` hook)? To me it is obvious hooks won't use other hooks because that could lead to an infinite loop in a hurry > Does reading `$this->countryCode` use the getter hook, even it's from a `countryCode` hook? same > If not, is there a way to call the `countryCode` getter from this setter? There is although it's a bit tricky and not intuit…

> To me it is obvious hooks won't use other hooks because that could lead to an infinite loop in a hurry

Yet in Javascript:

test = { set a(x) { this.b = x }, get a() { return 2 }, set b(x) { this.c = 10 }}

Object { a: Getter & Setter, b: Setter }

test.a = 10

10

test

Object { a: Getter & Setter, b: Setter, c: 10 }

and yes it's possible to make infinite loops.

Re: PHP 8.4

#145

Post by wvenable »

PaulHoule wrote: post #142

That “public private(set)” boggles my mind. Why not “readonly public”?

Readonly might have different semantics (as it does in C#).

Readonly has been discussed but it wasn't part of the property hooks RFC and is a separate issue/feature. This is just a natural consequence of having private setters.

Re: PHP 8.4

#146

Post by James_K »

ok123456 wrote: post #82
idoubtit wrote: post #22

I'm just a PHP programmer for work, but I worry about the orientation PHP has chosen. As French people say: better is the enemy of good (Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien). The two new language features bring a higher language complexity for dubious gains. I hope I won't have to work with these. Property hooks mean that some language magic will turn a property access into a call to methods. It implies that `$this->x` has…

This feature has been in C# since about 2.0, and it's been an overall positive. It reduces boilerplate and inconsistencies in different programmers doing the boiler-plate differently. It also gives static analysis tools semantic information about the structure of your classes. It can group pairs of methods that deal with the encapsulation of fields.

Every step on the path to bloat is justified.

Re: PHP 8.4

#147

Post by wvenable »

cute_boi wrote: post #124

I can see PHP is getting too much complex.

You trade complexity in source code for complexity in language. For example, property hooks will make code that currently uses other methods to accomplish that task much easier to read and write.

Re: PHP 8.4

#148

Post by wvenable »

jayflux wrote: post #51
mg wrote: post #6

These days, I am super torn about what language to use for new web projects. PHP: - Easy to deploy: Upload files, done. - Easy to develop: Reload page, see changes. - Lots of HTTP tooling built in. - Fast. Python: - Great language. - Great code reuse system: Modules. - Nice framework: Django. - Less breaking changes in recent years.

> Easy to deploy: Upload files, done I know people love to say this, but does anyone realistically make websites or web apps that way? No, not really. Even with PHP there are frameworks, there is a package manager, there is version control, and there are deployment systems. Pretending that PHP developers are uploading a .php file to a shared hosting server (like in 2002) to suit the narrative feels disingenuous to me…

> I know people love to say this, but does anyone realistically make websites or web apps that way?

In PHP, I do. In other platforms, no. My personal PHP site is published by a git push to the server.

Re: PHP 8.4

#149

Post by wvenable »

jacobyoder wrote: post #78
idoubtit wrote: post #22

I'm just a PHP programmer for work, but I worry about the orientation PHP has chosen. As French people say: better is the enemy of good (Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien). The two new language features bring a higher language complexity for dubious gains. I hope I won't have to work with these. Property hooks mean that some language magic will turn a property access into a call to methods. It implies that `$this->x` has…

I'd tried to put together an RFC years ago to introduce groovy-style accessors in PHP. $this->foo would look for a getFoo() method, and execute if it existed, or not if not. Felt like that was easier to reason about, fwiw, but I couldn't get it off the ground. Even then, there were multiple C#-style get/set proposals floating around, so this style seems to be the one more people like. Not a fan of the style, personal…

I'm not a fan of that kind of magic in my languages but such a thing was already easily doable in PHP. You could just have a base class that implements __get and __set so that $this->foo automatically calls $this->getFoo().

Re: PHP 8.4

#150

Post by wvenable »

alt227 wrote: post #84
idoubtit wrote: post #22

I'm just a PHP programmer for work, but I worry about the orientation PHP has chosen. As French people say: better is the enemy of good (Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien). The two new language features bring a higher language complexity for dubious gains. I hope I won't have to work with these. Property hooks mean that some language magic will turn a property access into a call to methods. It implies that `$this->x` has…

I agree. PHP is such a simple language to follow but now with these property hooks, if you dont fully understand how they work then the code becomes unreadable due to the magic. Worse than that, it is possible to read it wrongly which is going to cause many nasty headaches for amateur developers of the future trying to debug PHP code.

PHP has had the ability to dynamically handle properties for decades so this doesn't hurt readability -- in fact, it makes it better.
Post reply on HN