PHP 8+ is filling-in a lot of the missing features -- type hints, attributes, named parameters, etc.

Nowadays instead of using 'string_you_have_to_remember_and_might_mistype' or abusing associative arrays as in the given code sample, you can usually get full code completion luxury with PHP without magic comments or other workarounds.

PHP 8 is still missing a few critical features such as generics and typed resource handles, and nikic left the project, but I'm still hopeful PHP 9 will deliver on those key additions.