[bsmith]

I disagree.

> First of all PHP isn't about elegance...PHP is about getting stuff done.

What language isn't about getting stuff done?

> He doesn't offer one good valid technical reason why not to use comments...

Not true. The OP explicitly points out that it breaks many PHP debugging capabilities.

> The fact that you can even parse out comments with the reflection API lends, to me, that meta-programming is a-ok.

So what? PHP also has a goto function. Should we use it just because we can?

> I'll take the first one because I have other shit I need to do.

Just because it's less verbose doesn't mean it's better. Otherwise, everyone would use Coffeescript instead of JS.

[Sumaso]

Many of the OPs complains have the tone of "not my PHP!!!".

If old PHP devs learn to look for annotations, points 2 and 4 no longer apply, and many points in 1 no longer apply either.

It sounds more like a PHP dev grumbling about change... (what else is new)

[theunraveler]

I am not opposed to change--in fact, I welcome it, especially with regard to PHP. Rather, I'm criticizing the use of annotations based on the argument that it is bad application design.

[astrodust]

Making comments become as important as live code is never a good idea. This practice also encourages arbitrary syntax and would eventually lead to a mess of different standards with no cohesion.

Having a proper `pragma` declaration would be ideal.

[hrktb]

> PHP also has a goto function. Should we use it just because we can?

Definitely yes. Use it whenever fit.