The original RFC that led to this feature originally used a special variable to indicate the backing store; that was overwhelmingly disliked, as it was "magic".

The original RFC that led to this feature originally used a special variable to indicate the backing store; that was overwhelmingly disliked, as it was "magic". Conversely php already has other places where context affects property accesses, and IME it's not the problem you make it out to be.