The reason for that is that python2=>3 fixed several fundamental problems. 5.6 => 7 is just a incremental upgrade, whatever the version numbering tells you. Most of the PHP problems are still there.
> The reason for that is that python2=>3 fixed several fundamental problems. 5.6 => 7 is just a incremental upgrade, whatever the version numbering tells you. Most of the PHP problems are still there.
too bad for py3's fundamental problem: that it broke the interface so badly, people still don't use it. PHP7 has no such problem, and gets to add boatloads of new features (which will be immediately used/adopted) while deprecating old versions of the language.
How would you fix this without breaking most PHP code out there?
How would you fix ==, > and < behaviour without breaking most PHP code out there?
How would you fix Unicode without breaking most PHP code out there?
If PHP fixed things like this, it would be a decent programming language, but it would also break a lot of things. Kinda of like what python3 did, only that it didn't have to break quite so much, since python2 was already pretty decent.
imho python3 fixed the issue in the wrong way, so it will never have a great amount of users: down the road the choice will be upgrade to python3 or choose a more modern programming language like go with immense performance boost. I think people will choose to leave python.
5 to 7 does fix some big problems, however. In particular, it is the first release with uniform syntax for variables (https://wiki.php.net/rfc/uniform_variable_syntax) and an AST-based compiler. It also replaces a lot of PHP-style errors with exceptions.
too bad for py3's fundamental problem: that it broke the interface so badly, people still don't use it. PHP7 has no such problem, and gets to add boatloads of new features (which will be immediately used/adopted) while deprecating old versions of the language.