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I myself really like php5 as well, but your " Irrelevant complaints" are quite relevant.

- namespaces: I use classes,dude. But in fact the number of classes in use can grow to such an extend in "enterprise-applications" (i know, this word sucks), that even there you'll get into naming-collisions...

- globals: yes, they can pierce through your code, they do it so well, that you'll never find the place again, where you defined the variable... this generates dependencies, that are hard to unravel.

I'll leave it at that.

I definitely miss static typing when working in php. What's "right-click, find-callers" for Java code takes grepping/searching in Php. It really hurts refactoring which is an activity of a few minutes in Java. In Php the mention of it makes the dev team nervous.
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php5 introduced type hinting. "Go to declaration" and similar IDE commands can therefore be supported.
Don't know if it works in eclipse but it should. Also from what I've heard, namespaces may be coming to php5 soon (also: see http://www.petitiononline.com/phpns/)

Voted down for the "Irrelevant complaints" section

Voted down because he glossed over many of PHP's deficiencies, namely: inconsistent function naming conventions; having to remember where to use ===, !== and ==, !=; Its got a nasty, nasty syntax e.g. $var and $this-> and last but not least, security.
Plus, as Lars mentioned, his irrelevancies are, indeed, really relevant.

One is case sensitive.. am I missing something?

I don't understand PHP haters at all. Each language has its place in the web and it's up to the programmer to decide which is best.

I too dislike the inconsistent function naming, but is it really that big of a deal? And is the comparison syntax really that tough?

To your last deficiency Barry, security is ALWAYS a developer issue. If a developer doesn't write secure code, there will be a problem. Blame the developer for this; not the language.

PHP's strength and weakness is that it is flexible. Done. The only reason rag on php is because a lot of people write poor code. It's not php's fault that you didn't check for sql injection.

lol, i never heard anybody attacking php, first i thought that ruby people were fighting against php since ruby is better version of it, but at first chance guy took swing at java, just weird for me.

i like php, there is just something cool about it, however i dont want to read your php code.
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It's not a balanced article, it's just a fanboy's rant.