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A comment on PHP introduces "goto". Parent comment

Re:PHP introduces "goto" by ars on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @04:46PM (#649952)
PHP does not have 3000 keywords. It has an ordinary number, and the rest are functions - basically the standard library.

You are confusing the language and the library. And for that matter the library is not bad either, it does however have a few poorly named legacy functions.

> It's just silly to say that all languages are equal.

Sorry, I wasn't really trying to say that. I meant "loosely typed procedural languages" not "any other language".

You pick the language the matches what you are doing, there is nothing inherent about PHP that makes it bad.

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Re:PHP introduces "goto" by SwellJoe on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @05:27PM (#650033)
PHP does not have 3000 keywords. It has an ordinary number, and the rest are functions - basically the standard library.

A library function that is not optional is effectively a keyword. The PHP standard library (all ~3000 functions) is not optional, as far as I know.

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Re:PHP introduces "goto" by nir on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @05:58PM (#650079)
Many (most?) of them are optional, you can compile PHP with/without certain extensions. Design wise, it seems insane - kind of like the iPhone's non-removable battery. Turns out it doesn't hurt either one's popularity though...
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Re:PHP introduces "goto" by SwellJoe on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @06:51PM (#650157)
OK, so I really didn't think I needed to specify "at run-time" with regard to the meaning of "optional".
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Re:PHP introduces "goto" by ars on Wednesday June 10, 2009 @07:55AM (#650848)
They can be done at runtime, you can dl() whatever modules you want.

However no one bothers. Why? Because while having lots of keywords is a problem in theory, in the real world it doesn't matter at all.

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