On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 7:27 AM, Andrew Faulds <[email protected]>wrote:
> To avoid BC breaks we should try to avoid major syntax changes.
Again, why should we be worrying so much about BC breaks on a major version
increment? BC breakage is just a fact of life whenever a major version of
anything comes out. Because you can't have major improvements without it,
I would classify it as a necessary evil.
Don't we have a deprecation policy already worked out for this sort of
thing? If we can throw an E_DEPRECATED, then do that; otherwise, I'd say
just make the change and document it very clearly. People are going to be
reluctant to switch to a new major version anyway; there are still a lo t
of people who use PHP 4. There's already an expectation that there will be
significant BC breaks. I think we're just shooting ourselves in the foot
if we keep trying to run away from that. It's either that or we let the
language stagnate indefinitely.
If it's better, people will adopt. It'll just take time and convincing,
but that's also just something that comes with the territory I think.
--Kris