[Nitramp]

Honestly, I would prefer PHP remove all the bad parts of PHP before adding new things.

This has already been done, and the result is called "Python" (or Ruby, or ...). SCNR.

Edit: ok, I realize this was maybe a bit too snarky. But I mean it: if you remove all the somewhat strange parts from PHP, you are breaking backwards compatibility. And at that point, your users have no reason not to move to another, maybe cleaner language (e.g. Python) all together.

So if you want to get a cleaner PHP while breaking backwards compatibility, you might as well just use a different language.