Let's be controversial: In modern PHP, you should never type-hint an array.

Before you start throwing tomatoes, hear me out.

PHP allows you to specify the type of a function/method parameter or return value. These return values can be any legal PHP type, which includes any class or interface type, various scalars, and some fancy pseudo-types like callable and iterable.

PHP has a data type that it calls array, although it's not really an array as any other language would define it. It combines what most languages would call a vector (a sequence of variable length) with a dictionary (a list of key/value pairs). As a result, it often gets used as a cheap anonymous struct for complex data that the developer feels isn't worth defining a class for.

And you should almost never use array as a type hint. Why? Because there's always a better, more generic option.

Let's consider three cases:

It's been a while since I last posted about bladesmithing, but I've still been at it. My first writeup got fairly good reception so for posterity I figured I'd finally get around to blogging my second blade.

A few notes: I finished this blade several months ago; I'm only just getting around to writing it up. (I'm finishing up my 5th blade right now as I write this.) I've since learned various things I've been doing wrong but I'll largely be covering how this blade was built at the time. Second, I've decided that I should start giving my knives names to help distinguish them rather than just "first", "second", etc. My forge instructor said my first blade looked vaguely Civil War-ish, so I have retroactively dubbed it "Ulysses", as in General Ulysses S. Grant. This blade is curved, so I hereby dub it Suleiman The Curvy!

The other day I was working on some sample code to test out an idea that involved an object with an internal nested array. This is a pretty common pattern in PHP: You have some simple one-off internal data structure so you make an informal struct using PHP associative arrays. Maybe you document it in a docblock, or maybe you're a lazy jerk and you don't. (Fight me!) But really, who bothers with defining a class for something that simple?

But that got me wondering, is that common pattern really, you know, good? Are objects actually more expensive or harder to work with than arrays? Or, more to the point, is that true today on PHP 7 given all the optimizations that have happened over the years compared with the bad old days of PHP 4?

So like any good scientist I decided to test it: What I found will shock you!

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Recently I was working on some PHP code (for the PHP-FIG) that involved code generation. Lots of systems these days are doing code generation (compiled dependency injection containers, ORM classes, etc.), but surprisingly I've avoided having to touch that code myself until now.

Of course, like any good developer I was writing tests for it as I went. That meant needing to test that the generated code was valid PHP syntax and did what I wanted it to do.

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Back in 2002 I went on a rant on an eGroups mailing list (remember those?) regarding copyright. The resulting essay later became part of a graduate class project in 2004 on how to fix the copyright system.

Going through old files I happened across that essay and project. I've restored the whole project on my website.

The original essay I am reproducing here in its entirety, as it seems it would be relevant to the audience on SteemIt. 16 years later... it's all still true and we're still repeating the same lies fed to us by the copyright cartels.

Originally published 2002 by Larry Garfield

In the fundamental order of the universe, there is matter and there is energy. The sum total of matter and energy in the universe is finite. It cannot be created nor destroyed, and it cannot even be converted from one to the other outside of a nuclear reaction.

One of my favorite podcasts is Make Me Smart, hosted by public radio's Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood. It's part of the Marketplace family of shows by American Public Media and is a friendly, casual look at the "big picture" of many of the stories of the day. One of their running themes is the "Make Me Smart question" that they ask everyone they interview, and encourage listeners to write or tweet or vlog in with their own answers to:

What is something you thought you knew that it later turned out you were wrong about?

It took me a while to decide what my own answer to that would be, but when I finally did I realized it was going to be way too long for a tweet to explain, so here we go.

Learning is important. I trust that is a non-controversial statement.

Much has been said about learning styles, and I will not repeat it here. However, something I see less talked about is learning phases. Specifically, I want to talk about two distinct phases of learning: Up and Out.

While learning usually is applied to a skill, the concept I'm talking about applies to anything: Learning a new skill, getting accustomed to a new community, or culture, or country, or tradition, or religion, or practice, or... pretty much anything.

Recent events in the PHP community in the past few days have reminded me of an important point that bears repeating. Quite simply: There are always community standards, and if you are not upholding them then you are actively undermining them.

A surprising number of people seemed to like the knife picture I posted in my opening post, so what the hell, here's more knife-pr0n. :-)  I was taking pictures all along the way as I made it so that I could post a process story at some point, and this seems as good a place as any.

Warning: Red hot metal ahead...

This isn't the railroad spike it started from, because I totally forgot to take a picture of it first.  But it's the same type of spike.  Railroad spikes are pretty cheap, low-grade steel, probably around 1030 carbon but who really knows.  Good for practice, lame for a really good working blade.