The breaking changes section doesn’t even mention they changed error handling in methods that haven’t been change for 20 years.
PHP 8.4
221–230 of 337 posts
Re: PHP 8.4
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
A method is supposed to be an action and a property is supposed to be data. So I don't see the desire to disguise setting data as a "setting method" rather than using the syntax of assignment.
> A method is supposed to be an action and a property is supposed to be data. I agree! That's why it's wild to allow a setter to do literally anything. You aren't just setting a property, there is a conversion happening under the hood. And the reason I hate it is that code that appears to be infallible, isn't. It can have arbitrary side effects, raise exceptions, have unbounded runtime, etc.
It's abstraction. Your not supposed to care that the setter is doing anything. The class is providing you an interface -- what it does with that interface is not your concern. I hate to quote Alan Kay but all objects should just respond to messages. Whether that message corresponds to a method or a property is pure semantics.
I sometimes use getters and setters to provide backwards compatibility. What was just maybe a simple data field a decade ago doesn't even exist anymore because some major system has changed and we aren't rewriting every single application when we can provide the values that they need easily enough.
If you know that setters exist then you already know that the code can do more. It's not a huge mental leap from property setting to method calls. You should never assume anything is infallible. I don't think classes should even expose raw fields.
Re: PHP 8.4
#223I'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…
The two new language features bring a higher language complexity for dubious gains.
For a long time now, PHP has been on a trajectory of trying to be everything to everyone, constantly bolting on features from every language that happens to drift by.
My observation has been that the people who are deeply invested in PHP are tired of being hazed online for using a "toy" language, so they're trying to adopt all of the complexity and problems of other languages, rather than just keeping things simple, which is what used to be PHP's primary strength.
Re: PHP 8.4
#224I find it pretty fascinating that what used to be a beginner-friendly language, with limited capabilities but that is very easy to get started with, has now evolve to a bloated monster full of advanced features that you can't expect to know entirely, with a complex framework and tooling ecosystem to support it. PHP lovers generally don't like acknowledge that, but the PHP we've learned back-end development two decade…
PHP is still definitely a beginner-friendly language that is still very easy to get started with. Setup is as trivial as it always has been, copy a .php file onto a server and you’re good to go. No complicated frameworks or “deployment process” needed if you don’t want them (and most people don’t need them).
The difference between it and Java is you’re not forced into the ClassObjectGetterSetterPropertyHookFactoryBean paradigm with PHP. You can continue to write concise, simple, elegant scripts that read from top to bottom and serve one page and serve it well. You don’t have to use any of these crazy newfangled features - I, for one, will be using none of them, and will be sticking to my if-else blocks and nested for loops that will be easy to read and grok when I (or someone else!) come back to the code two months down the line.
Re: PHP 8.4
#225Are there any solid PHP WebSockets and WebRTC setups outside of Laravel?
Workerman has WebSocket support - https://manual.workerman.net/doc/en/appendices/about-websock...
Re: PHP 8.4
#226I find it pretty fascinating that what used to be a beginner-friendly language, with limited capabilities but that is very easy to get started with, has now evolve to a bloated monster full of advanced features that you can't expect to know entirely, with a complex framework and tooling ecosystem to support it. PHP lovers generally don't like acknowledge that, but the PHP we've learned back-end development two decade…
You can still write the old PHP4 way in virtually all cases. works fine. I've done so periodically, and every time I go "this sucks, gimme the tooling".
Sure, and I'm still using PHP every once in a while for personal needs (I have a handful of small personal websites built this way: PHP has this insanely cool capability of being just a scripting language for a basic dynamic website).
What's sad is that it's not how people use and teach PHP today.
PHP's magic really is that you can write small scripts super easily to do small tasks, but somehow most PHP developers insist that “no PHP isn't for building small scripts” but “a real, professional back end language ready for mission critical enterprise requirements blah blah blah”, because surely that make them sound more serious as programmers, missing the point entirely…
(And sorry to all insecure PHP programmers out there, but for serious stuff using PHP is still equivalent to coding with handcuffs and you should really learn a second programming language at last because being a one trick poney really isn't as cool as you think it is).
Re: PHP 8.4
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every php ORM disagrees. Nothing about it is magic
PHP ORMs and ORMs in general are notoriously hard to maintain. I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of PHP, I'm speaking from experience.
I maintain an ORM [ https://github.com/Divergence/framework/blob/release/src/Mod... ] and have also maintained a job's fully custom ORM as well. 20 YOE in PHP. Also speaking from experience :)
Re: PHP 8.4
#228I find it pretty fascinating that what used to be a beginner-friendly language, with limited capabilities but that is very easy to get started with, has now evolve to a bloated monster full of advanced features that you can't expect to know entirely, with a complex framework and tooling ecosystem to support it. PHP lovers generally don't like acknowledge that, but the PHP we've learned back-end development two decade…
PHP is still definitely a beginner-friendly language that is still very easy to get started with. Setup is as trivial as it always has been, copy a .php file onto a server and you’re good to go. No complicated frameworks or “deployment process” needed if you don’t want them (and most people don’t need them). The difference between it and Java is you’re not forced into the ClassObjectGetterSetterPropertyHookFactoryBea…
I still do, every once in a while when I'm using PHP for my personal websites, but it's been a very long time since I've updated the (very basic) dependencies I'm using since they all migrated to the “enterprise-grade tooling of the day” after 2010 or something.
While PHP can still be uses like that today (and is still unmatched in terms of ease of use for simple stuff when used like that) it's been a long time since the PHP project and developer community stopped caring about this use-case.
Re: PHP 8.4
#229I was curious about why setting `$this->countryCode` inside the setter for `countryCode` didn't result in infinite recursion. Turns out this is spelled out in the RFC, but not in the docs: When a hook is called, inside that hook $this->[propertyName] will refer to the “unfiltered” value of the property, called the “backing value.” When accessed from anywhere else, $this->[propertyName] calls will go through the relev…
C# has the same thing as Properties, but the backing value is set explicitly as a separate variable:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-...
Re: PHP 8.4
#230These 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.
Don't forget Laravel for PHP.
It’s difficult for me to trust a framework backed by venture capital (https://blog.laravel.com/accel-invests-57m-into-laravel). There are too many incentives to prioritize making money, which makes it easy to overlook developer experience. I rather use Symfony instead.