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Comment by robryan | Hacker News Reader

The backwards compatibility break they did got me thinking, it would be great to see a major PHP release that broke backwards compatibility to get things right as Python have done with version 3. I think anyone not interested in porting their code would already have a PHP more than suitable for their needs.

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If you could break backwards compatibility, what would you change?

I just mean the little niggling things people complain about like all the functions in the global namespace, inconsistent arguments, inconsistent error handling. I guess though a lot of PHP support comes from the deploy everywhere make minimal changes to old code ideas, so I can see why their quiet happy to not want to break to much old code.

What would be left would be hardly recognizable as PHP.

I dunno... I think it would be essentially the same for new users (since they have to look up things anyway), and it would certainly feel like PHP...

Actually, I agree. I have often thought there is a space for a revamped PHP, with compatible syntax (because people know it) but with many of the niggles removed and a better core library.

Accessible core libraries that are people are encouraged to use, stuff without a mess of dependencies to. You hardly ever seen introductions to PHP that encourage library use, it's mostly about rolling your own stuff.

I don't think that is such a great idea - stuff like == vs ===, PHP's class system and PHP's namespaces is all questionable...

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