A Hacker's Guide - Obsolete

php.internals

Daniel Martín Spiridione

6 years ago
Hi interns. The official PHP.net documentation of the "PHP at the Core: A Hacker's Guide" section (https://www.php.net/manual/en/internals2.php) is obsolete. In that sense Python has good documentation to be extended in C / C ++. I think this is also one of the reasons why there are libraries like NumPy and others that have popularized Python for data science. I personally know that the project http://www.phpinternalsbook.com exists. While this book is not yet fully updated to PHP 7, the information it provides is wonderful! I think the "A Hacker's Guide" documentation should clarify that it is outdated and incomplete and at least reference the project http://www.phpinternalsbook.com What do you think? Regards!

Girgias

6 years ago
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 at 13:07, Daniel Martín Spiridione < daniel.spiridione@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi interns. The official PHP.net documentation of the "PHP at the Core: A > Hacker's Guide" section (https://www.php.net/manual/en/internals2.php) is > obsolete. > > In that sense Python has good documentation to be extended in C / C ++. I > think this is also one of the reasons why there are libraries like NumPy > and others that have popularized Python for data science. > > I personally know that the project http://www.phpinternalsbook.com exists. > While this book is not yet fully updated to PHP 7, the information it > provides is wonderful! > > I think the "A Hacker's Guide" documentation should clarify that it is > outdated and incomplete and at least reference the project > http://www.phpinternalsbook.com > > What do you think? > > Regards! >
This is a known issue, and just reading a tiny bit of the guide you'll realise it is outdated as it mentions all over the place the original Zend engine or the Zend 2 engine. As said by the Doc Editor once (can't find the email again) it would be great to have it updated but the people having the skill to write tech documentation and the people who know the engine is really small. Adding a mention may seem worthwhile but meh. Now as to why Python is more used in data science and co, I'll chime in my personal opinion but I think it's mostly the case as Python syntax resemble MATLAB. Moreover, PHP has always "promoted" it self for Web Dev and not that much as a general purpose programming language. Just my two cents Best regards George P. Banyard

Daniel Martín Spiridione

6 years ago
I agree on this you mention. Obviously this is not the only and exclusive reason why Python is widely used for data science, nor is it something that interests me. I simply mention that if I or someone else wanted to generate an extension like NumPy, for example, for more knowledge I have of C I don't have an official document to understand the PHP core. I do not promote the generation of extensions, but if necessary the official documentation does not help, even confuses. Regards El jue., 23 ene. 2020 a las 9:21, G. P. B. (<george.banyard@gmail.com>) escribió:

Christoph Becker

6 years ago
On 23.01.2020 at 13:07, Daniel Martín Spiridione wrote:
> Hi interns. The official PHP.net documentation of the "PHP at the Core: A > Hacker's Guide" section (https://www.php.net/manual/en/internals2.php) is > obsolete. > > In that sense Python has good documentation to be extended in C / C ++. I > think this is also one of the reasons why there are libraries like NumPy > and others that have popularized Python for data science. > > I personally know that the project http://www.phpinternalsbook.com exists. > While this book is not yet fully updated to PHP 7, the information it > provides is wonderful! > > I think the "A Hacker's Guide" documentation should clarify that it is > outdated and incomplete and at least reference the project > http://www.phpinternalsbook.com > > What do you think?
I have suggested to remove this section from the manual and to replace it with a page linking to external documentation long ago, but see <https://news-web.php.net/php.doc/969386915>. Thanks, Christoph

Adiel Cristo

6 years ago
Yep! I still believe that having only external references about the internals of PHP works against us, in the sense that as we develop the language, we should be the first ones to provide the documentation about how to do it. We have a great user documentation, thank you guys for that, and I'm proud of having contributed with a few translations until now. I don't know exactly what kind of differences of opinion resulted in a separate internals documentation (and with a different license), and I know that will demand a monumental effort to start to update ours. I'm committed with learning the minimum necessary to having at least a simple documentation, and I already started that, although with a long delay from what I planned due to other projects, but I'm working on it. Considering that the decision isn't taken yet, if you need a deadline to delete the outdated internals section or to maintain only the external references I propose the release date of PHP 8. Any objections? Kind regards, *Adiel Cristo* Senior PHP Developer adielcristo@gmail.com LinkedIn <http://br.linkedin.com/in/adielcristo> On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 5:49 AM Christoph M. Becker <cmbecker69@gmx.de> wrote:

Paul M. Jones

6 years ago
> On Jan 25, 2020, at 07:23, Adiel Cristo <adielcristo@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm committed with learning the minimum necessary to having at least a > simple documentation, and I already started that, although with a long delay from > what I planned due to other projects, but I'm working on it.
That sounds like a lot of work; best of luck! Note also that there is https://phpinternals.net/ which I have found useful.
-- Paul M. Jones pmjones@pmjones.io http://paul-m-jones.com Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP https://leanpub.com/mlaphp Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP https://leanpub.com/sn1php