I really appreciate the approach of the Python dev team. It's methodical, deliberate and patient; the exact opposite of how I feel the PHP team has managed that project. Features in PHP seem to be decided upon and implemented in a rather hasty and whimsical manner. A couple of examples come to mind:
- PHP access syntax is completely inconsistent.
Accessing a method/member of an instance is $foo->bar; a static method/member of a class is accessed as Foo::bar; and namespace access introduces yet another syntax, Foo\bar\baz.
- Another example is the introduction of anonymous, first-class functions.
For five major versions, functions were not first-class, and existing libraries and frameworks were written to accept function names in-place of the actual functions. One point-release changed all that, and the result has been a predictable clusterfsck of inconsistency. I wish the PHP team had planned for a long-term adoption of this feature: first-class functions are a fundamental part of a language's character, not a whimsical bolt-on.
No Big plans on threading: Developer and Patch needed.
Functional programming: No one has proposed it, Developer and Patch needed.
There's a trend here - developers propose things for inclusion and changes to python based on needs, availability of time and skill. See the entire PEP system: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/
We add new things in almost every release. If someone proposed a big pep for something on your list, it would be discussed, and added to a release.
- PHP access syntax is completely inconsistent. Accessing a method/member of an instance is $foo->bar; a static method/member of a class is accessed as Foo::bar; and namespace access introduces yet another syntax, Foo\bar\baz.
- Another example is the introduction of anonymous, first-class functions. For five major versions, functions were not first-class, and existing libraries and frameworks were written to accept function names in-place of the actual functions. One point-release changed all that, and the result has been a predictable clusterfsck of inconsistency. I wish the PHP team had planned for a long-term adoption of this feature: first-class functions are a fundamental part of a language's character, not a whimsical bolt-on.