coding style - (When) should I use type hinting in PHP?

Question

I can't understand the motivation of PHP authors to add the type hinting. I happily lived before it appeared. Then, as it was added to PHP 5, I started specifying types everywhere. Now I think it's a bad idea, as far as duck typing assures minimal coupling between the classes, and leverages the code modularization and reuse.

It feels like type hints split the language into 2 dialects: some people write the code in static-language style, with the hints, and others stick to the good old dynamic language model. Or is it not "all or nothing" situation? Should I somehow mix those two styles, when appropriate?

Answer 1

It's not about static vs dynamic typing, php is still dynamic. It's about contracts for interfaces. If you know a function requires an array as one of its parameters, force it right there in the function definition. I prefer to fail fast, rather than erroring later down in the function.

(Also note that you cant specify type hinting for bool, int, string, float, which makes sense in a dynamic context.)