PHP will never fully be utilized as an OO language by the vast majority of its user base due to its syntactically terrible standard library and history as a functional language.
1) its only a step backwards if you're currently using a better language. its a step forward for other people who are way behind, or for people who have no web development experience and want to get started. it a decent and very popular learning language. if someone starts writing about goto in their php tutorials for beginners, we'll have a problem.
2) php is procedural, not functional. (edit: whoops, beaten to this punch)
I almost agree with this. I'm experimenting with Kohana for my latest code, and even though this is supposed to be the lean, fast OO framework, there's a LOT of boilerplate associated. Less than a third of my code is actually get-things-done code, as opposed to more than two thirds last time I was using a home-grown, not-especially-OO framework.
Maybe some other framework does this better, though.
PHP will never fully be utilized as an OO language by the vast majority of its user base due to its syntactically terrible standard library and history as a functional language.
As such, this addition makes plenty of sense.