It strikes me that several of the languages that gained popularity at the turn of the century are having a bit of an identity crisis in the face of their increasing irrelevance. This is especially evident in PHP, but I'm beginning to feel the same about Java in the face of JDK8.<p>With the new breed of popular languages (Ruby, Python, Scala, Clojure etc.) heavily influenced by functional programming, it seems as if the incumbents are desperate to remain relevant by adding comparable features with little consideration for their impact on the language as a whole.<p>For me, PHP has become (quite some time ago actually) a "kitchen sink" of a language; if another language has it, it's a fair bet that PHP will try to add it at some point in the future.