The DX Files: Abandon Anonymous Arrays of Attributes

This is part three of my series, The DX Files: Improving Drupal Developer Experience. This time, I’m suggesting changing some of Drupal’s most basic data structures and APIs by replacing anonymous arrays with well-defined data structures. I fully expect lots of disagreement.
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2010 has been an inflection point for the Acquia partner program. We are doing more business than ever with partners, including case studies with Palantir.net, Blink Reaction, and IBM Global Services.
Bryan House
It is that phase of my life! I'm just turning 30 in a month, working with Drupal for 7 years and just had my third Acquia anniversary a week ago. Time to look back and evaluate how things went, all the good and bad things; even better if the wisdom can be shared with others. This was part of my thinking when I submitted the session titled "Come for the software, stay for the community" for Drupalcon Copenhagen.
Gábor Hojtsy
It sounded like a really simple request: "Is it easy to add a search filter for 'My posts'?". In other words, add a search result facet for posts by the current (logged in) user through the Apache Solr Search Integration module APIs?
But then the wheels start turning - we want not just one blind link, but a real facet link that tells us how many results we'll get. Also, if we are filtering by 'My posts' then we probably have an equal use case for the opposite filter 'Posts not by me'. So we really need a facet block with two links and facets counts.
Peter Wolanin







Comments
I disagree! Anonymous arrays
I disagree!
Anonymous arrays is a great way to do things quick and dirty. If I want type-safe and well defined (in academic means) code, I use JAVA not PHP. If I want to get a quick result I use Drupal not JSF.
Why change that?
And - changing basic data structures will make lot's of written and tested code unusable. That would be a step to kick Drupal out of serious IT business.
"some of Drupal’s most
"some of Drupal’s most basic data structures"
What did you have in mind? I am sure I would agree with some, although we could refactor core for the next 2 years and still have tons of work to do.