I don't think PHP's main problem is speed. It's generally used for websites, and a few milliseconds aren't going to make a difference when pages are so bloated by JavaScript libraries to often be 5-10MB. PHP's problem IMHO is that I wouldn't be able to use it if it wasn't for autocomplete: inconsistent function names, inconsistent parameter order. The ecosystem is fine, there's Composer, PSR, Laravel. The problem is…
Stupid idea IMHO. PHP is great BECAUSE it organic growth. It fully exposes the incorporated libraries with the same naming convention of the library functions and often additionally also in ObjectOriented style. Have a look how green field planned ObjectOriented Namespaces in Java and dotNet Framework 1-4 turned out. Java's String vs StringBuilder vs StringBuffer, Java's deprecated Date and Time classes, the whole "o…
Of course you need great documentation, with those inconsistencies users have to look at it every 5 minutes to even know what they're doing.
EDIT: Thanks. https://github.com/nkkollaw/php/commit/eeb8d6b38272eadaae405...