I'm just trying to improve PHP. And I write _a lot_ of PHP code, so I have some idea about where the syntax could be improved IMHO.

PHP is a mix of C, Perl and other styles anyway, why deny it? It's strength is that it's a pragmatic and simple language but that doesn't mean that nothing should be changed ever.

I don't want to break existing programs. And I don't care about range() (or even list() too much for that matter), I just recognize the fact the I'm using a lot of array() and it is both unnecessarily hard to write _and_ read. Saying that array() works well and [] is incomprehensible just does not match my experience. Both for myself (some years of programming experience) and for newbies. I saw no difference teaching people to initialize an array with array() or []. Someone new to programming has to memorize that he has to write $a = array() (and not $a = new array() for example) anyway, $a = [] would be just as easy IMHO.

So why was the whole private/public/static/throw/catch thing introduced? Following your logic people who want this should use Java. I'm much more worried about code getting unreadable because of these extensions actually. It turned PHP into a much more complex language but since it is all optional I don't mind. But to deny some simple (and backward compatible) syntactic sugar to people who just want an easy to use language seems missing the point to me.

I like some of the Python syntax. But some of it is cumbersome. Same with PHP. But I think PHP is closer to what I want so what's wrong with trying to improve it where it's possible (and easily done)?