5.3!

The PHP 5.3 release process has officially started with alpha1. Which hopefully means we’d have release in about 2-3 monthes.

This 5.3 release has two huge features that I think will have big influence on the future of PHP – namespaces and closures. There’s also late static binding, which allows to do all kinds of cool tricks, new cool extensions, new faster re2c-based parser, and many other smaller improvements.

Big thanks to everyone who helped to create it, provided feedback, helped with tests, documentation, etc. I think this version will be very successful. And separate thanks to Lukas who made this release from “erm… sometime soon” into “full speed ahead”!