Re: [PHP-DEV] Disheartening Rant on TrueAsync RFC (was Re: [PHP-DEV] [PRE-RFC] Runtime modules)

>
>
> Folks, I'm going to be blunt. If you want PHP to be the next COBOL, this
> is how you go about it. COBOL went from one of the more important languages
> out there in 1980 to a joke by 1995.  PHP can fall just as fast. We've all
> seen the "PHP is dead" threads on LinkedIn. Knives are out.
>

Gonna age myself, but I actually used COBOL, and its "death" has nothing to
do with OO but a plethora of other reasons, many tied to the great
programming languages that followed and it is not dead.

I can understand the hesitation of adopting something this major. People
> remember the PHP 6 unicode disaster well. But there was never a fully
> working implementation of PHP 6.  Async has a working implementation.
> There's rough edges, but there's something here.
>
> Change is scary, but it's the only constant.  Async operation is the norm
> now. Object Oriented Code had become the norm by 1995. COBOL ignored it,
> and died as a result. Will PHP do the same now
>

Async is a useful function no doubt, but in the context of a primarily web
programming language like PHP, I would argue the practical utility of the
functionality is relatively limited. That is not to say PHP should not have
Async, I think it should, but not everything needs async and it is best a
solution where doing things in parallel makes sense, ie slow db queries or
http/api requests (although this can already be done with curl).

-- 
Ilia Alshanetsky
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