The IE metaphor is terrible for programming languages :) I don't know about PHP, but C++ (and I suspect Java too) is backwards compatible and doesn't belong in

The IE metaphor is terrible for programming languages :) I don't know about PHP, but C++ (and I suspect Java too) is backwards compatible and doesn't belong in the same class with Python. One can still compile older code and start using new features as they see fit, there is no hard break.