I couldn't agree more. The PHP internals group struggles still occur to this day as new ideas and fresh thinking run up against the old guard and more often than not are discarded.

I don't necessarily blame the "old guard" - they've been around a long time and they've seen a lot of failed ideas - and it's been them who dealt with the cleanup and had to maintain those broken features long past the founders of those features had moved on.

This isn't a bad thing: PHP is rooted in many businesses both small and enterprise: it will be around for a long time. Projects like HHVM are going to ensure that.

However, I no longer think that PHP is going to "turn it around" and will ever be a model of innovation. It lost it's opportunity to do that.