PHP 5.3 - A Heavy Hitter in Training

This release may be the most significant update PHP has seen since PHP 5. This is because many of the features planned for the first release of PHP 6 are being backported to 5.3. Anyone that has been folowing the development of PHP is likely aware that 6.0 will represent its entrance into what I like to call its adulthood. This milestone will mark the end of support for deprecated non compliant code, and will fully embrace an OO coding style. It's not going to be the end-all be-all version of PHP, but it will no longer attempt to cling to its procedural roots.

Let's take a look at some of the goodies in store for us in PHP 5.3.