Hi!
I agree, it would be a break a lot of code. But I'd rather see some fundamental changes at that level (call it PHP 6, make it not BC with PHP 5.x or earlier), and remove the cruft and standardize on some of the slop.
Fundamental changes means "throw out your production code and start developing a new one". Guess how many PHP shops with existing code would be happy to do it. It's nice to rant about how PHP function are inconsistent and stuff, but no project was seriously impeded by it ever. At most it is mildly irritating. Huge BC break, on the other hand, would mean all major apps/libraries/frameworks become instantly not available, and who knows when they catch up. At this point, you might as well have a new language.
Shorter array syntax seems like an unnecessary addon, will create more
Since many experienced people are supporting it, I'd think that while it seems unnecessary to you, it may seem otherwise for them.
I would help with the Unicode project if I could. I am not sure why it was so tough, but I imagine people infinitely smarter than I am were
Read this (esp. first answer): http://stackoverflow.com/q/6162484/214196 It's about Perl, but gives you an impression why it is so tough.
Making JSON style arrays seems stupid to me. When I look at a PHP script I expect PHP syntax. Not stolen pieces from a bunch of other languages (yes, some of it is that way already, but let's not keep the trend going please?)
Why not? If the pieces are good, stealing them is good. It's how progress happens - you "steal" good pieces and add couple of your own, and hope the result is good enough that somebody else would want to steal stuff from it :)
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