[joelangeway]

The global namespace in PHP is awesome. I don't have to learn a framework to solve a problem, there's a function for it.

Namespace qualifiers in names are a fine solution to the collision problem. That's effectively what's there already except every darn function has to be in a module.

Names don't have to be treated like property, you can invoke policy on them and change bad names. His dreams about rich metadata probably include version tags and hashes that would prevent this from silently breaking anything or in a way that couldn't be repaired by a tool.

Modules don't solve the problem you think they do, they just make the name of all functions longer and harder to figure out. They're not hierarchical.

He addressed issues of visibility/encapsulation and gave a great example of where modules fail to solve the problem. Though I don't quite follow his suggested fix, it looks like using lexical scope to encapsulate fib/3 but my Erlang is actually a bit rusty.

[damncabbage]

> Names don't have to be treated like property, you can invoke policy on them and change bad names.

A lot of PHP projects involve working with existing components or apps. Some of these use the global namespace with very obvious names, eg. phpBB's User, CodeIgniter's Session. Try and combine two components that use the same obvious names, and everything explodes in a giant mess of E_ERROR.

(It's the same deal with globally-scoped constants:

  define('ACTIVE',1);
  define('ACTIVE','active');

Makes life very interesting.)

[joelangeway]

OK, I might have change my mind about that. I have been lucky enough not to have had to use multiple selfishly named libraries I guess.