Types and Tests: Not Rivals, Just Working Different Shifts A common source of confusion in PHP development is the relationship between static analysis and unit testing. Are they redundant? Does adding types mean fewer tests? Does a comprehensive test suite make a type checker unnecessary? No to all three. They cover different grounds. The interesting […]
20
Jun
Jun
Five Ways to Write a PHP Type PHP’s type system is grown up. PHP 7.0 started the ball rolling with parameter and return types. PHP 7.4 added property types. PHP 8.3 added the class constant types, though we’ll omit this for now. PHP has quietly accumulated five distinct syntaxes where you can write something that […]
31
Jan
Jan
Semantic typing Semantic typing is an old practice, where the name of the parameter would also tell what its type is. It is typing, because a $string is supposed to be typed, and it is semantic, because only the human reader is actually using the meaning : PHP doesn’t really care. The interesting part is […]
13
Sep
Sep
The three nothings of PHP Mathematicians have the concept of infinity, which represents something that cannot be topped. Strangely enough, infinities come in different sizes : some infinities are larger than others. That sounds quite paradoxical, yet somewhat understandable. And yet, there are no less than three nothings in PHP. On the other hand, PHPians, […]