I used PHP for the past year. And honestly I still think it is not a good language. Just of the top of my head.
By far the biggest culprit. Arrays. This monstrosity is basically everything. Yes, it is fast but it only teaches bad habits. It is a weird combination of Arrays/Lists/(Dictionary/Hashmap) and you can’t know which one it currently is because there are 0 compile time safety checks. Also when used as a parameter it is passing a full copy instead. But the copy of course is only shallow. I have seen so many problems with that. And even worse when someone thinks the way to fix it, is to just json encode/decode the whole thing in order to get a deep copy before passing it.
Generics. I still don’t get why this is such a huge issue. Like I would rather have a half-baked optional compile time implementation then none at all. The worst part is that IDE tools support generics so you end up inplementing them on the comment level. I shouldn’t be forced to use generics through comments.
$ for variables. I know that this is just based on how the language grew. But god do I hate having to type it. It is not an easy to reach letter and just breaks my typing flow the whole time. You get used to it but still.
4 . The default functions. Yes. You will mostly use framework provided functions or your own stuff. But you still end up in contact with them and the naming schemes are still all over the place, so it is fast to just google it then hope you accidentally stumble upon it through the IDE. And some things are still straight up missing. Like the best way to deep copy an array is json_encode into json_decode. When I saw this the first time I was sure that must be wrong. But no. That is legit the way to do it.
Also I am stuck with PHP7 so some of my other complains seemed to be fixed in later versions. Also please don’t recommend DS for my first issue. I tried to push for it but it got vetoed because “it is too complicated for new devs”.
The answer for the deep copy would seem to be a combination of a static recursive function to copy the array while cloning the objects inside, with setting the __clone() magic function in your objects to break the references, no? Granted it’s not a built in function, but not difficult to implement.
Arrays are passed by copy by default. Every scalar or array value is copied by value. Every other thing (objects basically) is copied by reference.
Passing array by reference passes everything it used to copy by reference.
Attempting to clone an array will result in an error.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array will do the same as if passed to a function by value.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array using the reference operator will do the same as if passed to a function by reference.
So, in order to deep copy an array, just reassign and recursively traverse the array calling clone on each object. Of course, this would break (or not, depending on the intended use) when the same object is referenced multiple times under different keys.
Sorry for being lazy so no sources for now. But based on my research back then. Using clone (on arrays) is actually slower then json_encode/json_decode.
So there are some cool optimization tricks going on in the background. But that doesn’t make it any more intuitive for me.
I used PHP for the past year. And honestly I still think it is not a good language. Just of the top of my head.
By far the biggest culprit. Arrays. This monstrosity is basically everything. Yes, it is fast but it only teaches bad habits. It is a weird combination of Arrays/Lists/(Dictionary/Hashmap) and you can’t know which one it currently is because there are 0 compile time safety checks. Also when used as a parameter it is passing a full copy instead. But the copy of course is only shallow. I have seen so many problems with that. And even worse when someone thinks the way to fix it, is to just json encode/decode the whole thing in order to get a deep copy before passing it.
Generics. I still don’t get why this is such a huge issue. Like I would rather have a half-baked optional compile time implementation then none at all. The worst part is that IDE tools support generics so you end up inplementing them on the comment level. I shouldn’t be forced to use generics through comments.
$ for variables. I know that this is just based on how the language grew. But god do I hate having to type it. It is not an easy to reach letter and just breaks my typing flow the whole time. You get used to it but still.
4 . The default functions. Yes. You will mostly use framework provided functions or your own stuff. But you still end up in contact with them and the naming schemes are still all over the place, so it is fast to just google it then hope you accidentally stumble upon it through the IDE. And some things are still straight up missing. Like the best way to deep copy an array is json_encode into json_decode. When I saw this the first time I was sure that must be wrong. But no. That is legit the way to do it.
Also I am stuck with PHP7 so some of my other complains seemed to be fixed in later versions. Also please don’t recommend DS for my first issue. I tried to push for it but it got vetoed because “it is too complicated for new devs”.
The answer for the deep copy would seem to be a combination of a static recursive function to copy the array while cloning the objects inside, with setting the __clone() magic function in your objects to break the references, no? Granted it’s not a built in function, but not difficult to implement.
Arrays are passed by copy by default. Every scalar or array value is copied by value. Every other thing (objects basically) is copied by reference.
Passing array by reference passes everything it used to copy by reference.
Attempting to clone an array will result in an error.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array will do the same as if passed to a function by value.
Reassignment of a variable containing an array using the reference operator will do the same as if passed to a function by reference.
So, in order to deep copy an array, just reassign and recursively traverse the array calling
cloneon each object. Of course, this would break (or not, depending on the intended use) when the same object is referenced multiple times under different keys.Sorry for being lazy so no sources for now. But based on my research back then. Using clone (on arrays) is actually slower then json_encode/json_decode.
So there are some cool optimization tricks going on in the background. But that doesn’t make it any more intuitive for me.