the reason i bought a mac was to be able to test my work on all OS's. I thought that was a normal sensible thing todo (i.e. i can bootcamp and vm my way to full support)

He's an ex-developer for a payment processor. Might have a little bit of knowledge...

I have written, maintained and worked on gigantic PHP codebases, mainly in the realm of ecommerce (not that train wreck, magento). I have a lovehate relationship with the language, and my pet peeve is that it is so easy, we get the lowest ability developers who never take time to learn the theory or any other technologies. Having said that... If it wasn't for the LAMP infrastructure, the ease and speed of development, these codebases could not have been developed.

I think the standard libraries could do with an update, to add the consistency they deserve, and do update them to use modern features. The community for PHP is reaching a point of maturity that it has not seen before (look at composer, PSR-0, symfony2 and ZF2). I think this maturity is making the community a good place right now. I'm not leaving it anytime soon.

Take away PHP, watch the major sites of the Internet disappear. Where would we be with no Wikipedia?

we can get deeper with the ARm processor more easily than with x86. This isn't just about javascript or other High High level languages (although that is important), its about the fundamentals of programming and computer science.

These features can only be good for PHP. Now the community needs to step up and care for the language better. We have seen the popularity of many languages and frameworks rise and fall, but php keeps chugging along. Modern frameworks are awesome, but the community is still rather fractured. I would love to see people more proud of php, to get over the fads around them. Now the language is getting some nice features, I think it's our time to shine :)

that looks much cleaner than previous designs. congrats.

problem here is ruby.ruby developers hate semicolons. They ignore the decades old history opf the semicolon, and assert that the ruby/python/haskell way of indentation and semicolon-less code is the better way. They COULD be right, but im too deep seated in C/C++/Java/JS. One of the problems with javascript is the fact that it gives the choice.

Actually, it has nothing to do with ruby. The problem here is that some people use minification tools that rely on semicolons. If that weren't the case, this would be a total non-issue.

Agreed.

The first language I learned was VB6 (ewww), after that C, C++, Java, JavaScript and PHP, only a few years ago I started to hear a lot about Python, Ruby, etc.

I don't see what's the problem with the braces and semicolons, I got used to write them and I don't see it affect my coding speed or code readability, in fact I find it easier to read code with braces and semicolons, I learned a little of python a few months ago and ignoring the fact that I do not know the language syntax very well (or more common libraries) yet, I write it as quickly as I would write Java/C etc, for readability I read python slower but as I said I'm not used to the syntax/libraries/etc yet so that may be the problem.

Actually, Haskell lets you do it either way. It's the best of both worlds :)

This code:

    do a <- [1,2,3]
       b <- [4,5,6]
       return $ a + b

can also be written as:

     do {
       a <- [1,2,3];
       b <- [4,5,6];
       return $ a + b
     }

or:

     do { a <- [1,2,3]; b <- [4,5,6]; return $ a + b; }

I've even seen it like this:

     do { a <- [1,2,3]
        ; b <- [4,5,6]
        ; return $ a + b }

JavaScript also permits you do it either way. That's what this whole argument is about!

I'm merely responding to the parent's "ruby/python/haskell way of indentation" phrase.