[asddubs]

sure, I won't disagree with that, my point was more that the updates are more than 10% useful features usually. You can definitely make a point about how long it took php to get its type system into shape, but php is not exactly just some trendy framework of the week, and there are valid reasons to pick php as your language of choice (namely that it's the lowest barrier language especially for having non technical people do their own installation on some random server/shared hosting)

[murgindrag]

Seen locally, all improvements are useful. PHP is better each year.

Seen globally, it's 10% improvement and 90% churn. One "improvement" is a half-fix, another is another half-fix, and so on, where after 5 improvements you're 97% of the way there.

In the meantime, you've broken backwards-compatibility five times, perhaps not always in the literal sense (old code still runs), but in the practical sense (old code has to be rewritten to follow modern conventions and be compatible with new code).

You've also had five learning curves.

And you have a ton of legacy stuff to support, from each of those five changes, leading to an almost unbounded explosion of complexity.