Most of these gripes are fixed in PHP 5.3, although the lack of ability to access $this in closures drives me nuts. Aside from that, all languages have minor sy

Most of these gripes are fixed in PHP 5.3, although the lack of ability to access $this in closures drives me nuts. Aside from that, all languages have minor syntactic issues. Take your pick. I think the far bigger problem with PHP comes from the culture that surrounds re-use. Writing re-usable PHP is hard, we lack decent package management systems and systems for distributing light-weight packages of code with simple dependancies (I'm looking at you PEAR). The end result is a culture where re-inventing the wheel is standard practice or at best copy and paste.