Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one thing that can never be fixed is a poorly chosen feature. PHP has a lot of them. And they interact badly.
Yes, but... All languages (like any system) will have cruft, after a while. Is the solution really to do a periodic break with backwards compatibility for purity reasons, Python 3 style? There should be a better way?! What about a low level machine like Java/.Net and just let the next language evolve on top of that -- so old libraries could run? (Maybe there could be Xcompilers for Ruby/Perl 6/xxx to the Perl "byteco…
Figuring out when that happened to you is a judgement call.