[Typo3-dev] Alternative to hooks - fake "$this"

[Martin T. Kutschker]

Frank Benkart wrote:
> 
> And that is my thinking to make typo3 in the first way not normalised, the
> first should be a refactoring of the core engine. Using real oop. If done
> this, the second way is the normalisation.

There you go.

I knew we would end up with the OO discussion once we started the 
normalization. And if you start thinking about radical changes you'll 
find a whole lot of things you might want to change (some because they 
really would be better, some only because of an ideal model).

I don't want to discourage anyone in doing all these things, but 
consider the following:

OO-ifying and normalizing will take a long time
It will break compatibility with current (and future!) extensions
  (so you have to rewrite them or create new ones)
Development of TYPO3 will continue
  (so new features will not be in the "clean" code)

So I ask again:

What are the benefits of all the changes? Some possible gains:
- easier to maintain (on a code level)
- easier to read (good for new developers)
- performance (beware: normalization and classes may bloat the code!)
- ???

Not much, and the performance gain I doubt. At least without aggressive 
refactoring (eg moving to PHP5 classes, reference only array operations, 
superduper caching of all and everything).

Looks like hard work to me. At least half a year of broken and unusable 
code (depending of course on the number of devs and the devoted time). 
Probably more until the "new" TYPO3 will be up and running. Do you have 
the endurance to do it?

Masi