Solving the wrong problem
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I’m going to apologize in advance for bringing this up again, but there’s been more talk on the php.internals list about the namespace patch that was applied to PHP 6. And somewhere in the discussion (erm, I think discussion implies that there are two opinions given equal weight), someone linked to the original post that started this round.
Main assumption of the model is that the problem that we are to solve is the problem of the very long class names in PHP libraries.
Suddenly, I realized what was wrong: they set out to solve the wrong problem!
Namespaces reduce typing? No. Namespaces allow the same symbol to be used in two contexts. Importing a namespace, thereby saving keystrokes, is just a nice (and popular) addition.
I’m not giving up hope, though. Maybe, just maybe, one of us will cut through the fog.