The php[architect] site has posted an article pulled from their November 2018 issue providing a case for generics in PHP.

To elucidate their merit, we will look at how they might fit within the evolution of PHP’s type system to put us in a position to write more robust software:

“How can I signal that my method will return a Collection of User objects? And why would I want to do that?”

The article starts with a look at generics in other languages and how they're handled (such as Java and C#). From there they shift over to PHP, giving a code sample of a class that is typed to only accept one kind of value for its constructor. They provide an update for this that would work in PHP 7.4 (with typed properties) and how with the help of generics it would be simpler to define a more dynamic type requirement, allowing for more generalized class descriptions.

Tomas Votruba has a new post to his site showing you how you can get typed properties in your code "in a few seconds", a feature coming in the next major version of the language, PHP 7.4.

PHP 5.6 and 7.0 is going to be dangerous since 2019, PHP 7.1 is new baseline and PHP 7.3 is just about to be released in the end of 2018.

Is this the best time to upgrade your code to PHP 7.4?

He starts off by talking about the use of the @var annotation (DocBlock format) and how, while they can be informative, do nothing functionally speaking. He shows how to shift this over to a typed property, forcing the value to be an integer. He also covers current use of "best practices" when it comes to typing properties and how to think about future compatibility. He ends the post with the command you'd need to use - making use of the rector reformatter - to shift all of those @var annotations over to actual typed properties.

On the Laravel News site, there's a post talking about a feature that's coming in PHP 7.4: typed properties. It covers some of the basics of what they are and how they can help improve your code.

The Typed Properties 2.0 RFC was accepted with a vote of 70 in favor and one no vote. A 2/3 majority is required because typed properties is a language change. The typed property change is a PHP 7.4 proposal.

The post quotes the purpose of the feature from the RFC and provides an example of how most developers ensure property type safety now: via getters and setters. They then show a refactored version of this with typed properties, making for a much shorter class definition. They also include a code snippet showing all of the possible types you can use with the typed property functionality. They finish the post with a few of their own thoughts about string typing versus weak typing in PHP and link to the pull request that's in progress to implement the feature.