I'm perfectly aware 1.8 to 1.9 was a pretty big move for Ruby folks (maybe could've been called 2.0?), and 2.x to 3 in Python, that's the time for big changes. I've also written real production software in about half a dozen languages, so yes I do. I just happen to have a codebase of 100,000+ loc in PHP that I support, so I'm kinda heavily invested in it more than the others.

It sucked trying to rework so much PHP4 code for PHP5 while keeping b/c, since that felt like the slowest community migration to a new version I've ever seen... But it seems like each additional release from PHP changes and breaks something else. My codebase is older than many, so it's possible that's made it a bit more brittle over time, but things like completely changing the allowed characters in .ini file keys from 5.2 to 5.3 I find baffling. Yes, speed things up or improve things, but consider that existing liberties you've allowed may come to be relied on by your users. If you let them do something in 5.2, make sure they can still do it in 5.3. I'm always careful myself to make sure existing code will continue to work, and new features are offered as optional or via new APIs. Code from 3.x of my software continues to run fine on 5.x as a result, which lowers my support burdens.

So again, no I'm not just fanboying for other languages or falling for the "grass is always greener" line of thinking. PHP just has certain inelegant things that I find add to my overall frustration over time. I value terseness, so things like -> versus . for objects adds up, just like $ versus nothing for variables wears at the wrists too. I value consistency, so not remembering which parameter goes first for in_array() versus strpos(), or why the differences in naming add up too. Those are minor things that have been present from the start, but then when I start getting emails from people saying my software is messing up and I find out it's just that the latest version of PHP totally broke something I'd been relying on, that frustration is amplified tenfold.