Travis Swicegood

A boy can dream... can't he?

Published On
June 21 2007
Author
Travis Swicegood

PEAR has decided on namespacing all of their future code. Hooray! That means that new PEAR2 code will get along nicely with my code even though we might both have a Testing_Selenium object since theirs will now be PEAR2_Testing_Selenium, and mine is Domain51_Testing_Selenium. But what if it went further?

Wouldn't it be an amazing triumph of an open source community if all of the different camps came together now and started creating standard interfaces in the main namespace? Imagine being able to rely on an object that implements HTTP_Request being the same from PEAR2 to Zend to Solar to EZ to Domain51 and Timbucktwo. It would be an OO utopia...

Now if a sage programmer I know wasn't so sage... but he's right. It's not work the effort of herding cats for what little - if anything - you'd get out of it. At least there's dreaming...

Update: It should be noted that the assumption of PEAR2_ is based on looking at what's happening in the new PEAR repository and piecing together conversations on the mailing list. Greg's right, nothing's official yet, but let's keep our fingers crossed...

About

Travis Swicegood is a professional programmer and owner of Domain51, a web development company with a focus on non-profits, NGOs, and online activists. He doesn't change the world, he supports those who do.

He has personal a focus on web applications, performance, and stability; is author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git; and working on his second book. He has been using PHP; since '99 and still remembers how revolutionary PHP 4 was, but can't remember why. He's a TDD, open-source, and open government advocate—sometimes called a zealot—and lurker on many an open-source project mailing list when not learning other programming; languages; for fun, exploring his surroundings on bike, or tasting his latest kitchen and home-brew creations.

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