PHP 5.3 Released

Sudheer writes "The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes. Some of the key new features include: namespaces, late static binding, closures, optional garbage collection for cyclic references, new extensions (like ext/phar, ext/intl and ext/fileinfo), over 140 bug fixes and much more."

Re:Hooray fileinfo is standard!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What am I, as a Schemer? A minimalist? A chess player [mit.edu]? But seriously, I always saw PHP as one of the prime examples of cargo cult language design. "Perl has strings in front of variables, let's copy them, gods will be pleased." Obviously no one cared that in Perl, the sigil has some actual meaning, like in shell, unlike in PHP, where the single type of variables could be handled the same way it is handled in Python, Ruby, stc. And then the adoption of that strange Java-like OOP system, quite weird for a dynamically typed language. Another cargo cult [wikipedia.org] thinking? "Let's make a cargo plane out of wood and straw [flickr.com], soon the big birds will drop us more crates."

Re:Hooray fileinfo is standard!

[Majik Sheff]

Thank you, you got the gist of my post.

Every language has its strengths, weaknesses, glaringly awful bits, shiningly wonderful bits, and all of the subculture that go with those things. No language is perfect or even acceptable for every job.

PHP is an extremely organic language. It is the result of hundreds of developers' efforts and the inclusion of many modules that were once addons.

I've been using it since very early version 3.0, so I know why things are named the way they are. That doesn't make them any more consistent and it certainly doesn't make old code that grew up with the language any less correspondingly organic (read ugly and hackish).

Also, you forgot:

C++ - The emo kids
C# - The wannabes
BASIC - Special Education
Brainfuck - The kid who bit someone in third grade and now eats at his own table because he growls slightly too often

etc etc.

I'm hoping I can get a few more Underrated mods, I'd LOVE to have my first +5 Flamebait.