On 4/2/14, 2:02 PM, Marco Pivetta wrote:
> Sounds like a typical case of "marketing screwed up development", where did
> I see that?
>
> I agree with Nikita - it makes no sense to adapt to broken literature that
> is well known to be wrong.
> I'd be more worried by all the confusion about "where did PHP 6 go?", as
> well as the panic for those folks who are constantly scared by upgrades.
>
> And yes, it would be laughable to have PHP7 without a PHP6 :-)
>
Thanks for the feedback Marco. A few responses:
1. On the 'marketing screwed up' and 'adapting to broken literature'.
Realize that if we call the language PHP6, we are actually helping
those marketers who named their books PHP6. They will get a large boost
in sales as people search for books on this 'new PHP'.
2. On being 'well known to be wrong'.
I believe you missed part of my message, which was pointing out that
it's not actually well known. In the grand scheme of things, yes, the
'core community' knows that these things are wrong. But the point is
that you would be amazed that for every community member you know, there
are a dozen programmers out there who don't know that any sort of
community exists. I just ran into a company in a nearby town 2 nights
ago, who suddenly had 3 programmers from their firm show up to a local
meetup. They'd been doing PHP development for 10 years now - They had
no idea that meetups, or any online community existed.
And once 'real' books about PHP6 come out, and would be sitting next
to the 'incorrect' books on PHP6. How can one tell in a basic amazon
book search, which are accurate, and which are incorrect? You can't
even go off of the publication date, because often when publishers
re-print a book, those dates automatically rev.
3. "Where did PHP6 go?"
For those that have that question, it will be a simple google to
answer it, and I would expect it to be a big story on php.net explaining
it. On the converse, if we release a PHP6, then noone will question
it. Noone will google: "Is the current PHP6 the same as the PHP6 that
was supposed to come out years ago?" Because there's no reason to
question it.
4. "laughable to have PHP7 without a PHP6"
Yes and no. In the history of software development, this has
actually happened many times in the past. I could quote a number of
examples. (Word & WordPress anyone?) And really There is definite
precedent for it. We had a PHP6, there was a branch. It was deemed a
dead product, and so you move on to 7.
More importantly in this case, it comes back to: I doesn't hurt us,
at all, to just call it 7 and move forward, with a blog post explaining
why it was done, because 6 was a 'dead product branch'. There is no
drawback. And the benefit to the untold masses of programmers out
there, both current, and those who will be picking up PHP in the future,
is great.
Eli
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| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |
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