>I just want to do my job, not relearn a language I’ve used for 20 years.

Good thing is you usually don't have to, languages like php really try and makntain backwards compatability, so you _can_ keep doing what you're doing.

Even with some changes, companies rarely ride the wave and come onboard much later when major issues have been ironed out. Hell, there are PHP4 apps still out there

But that's a problem: it maintains backwards compatability with a LOT of well known problems/inconsistencies while introducing more features/inconsistencies for which you can just hope they don't mess up this time. It's a bit of good and a lot of bad from both worlds. I'm just so glad I don't have to use PHP anymore and no amount of a swine's make up will change this.

It seems every language has a group of people with an unrelenting urge to turn it into Java.

Really? What languages in particular? Even Java doesn't want to be Java anymore (see the "inspiration" it's taking from Kotlin and others in recent/next versions). PHP is the only language that seems to be chasing Java to me.

As long as weak typing is not abandoned, the Java-like language features are great.

I am really looking forward to generics in PHP.

Weak typing and generics, isn't that the worst of both worlds?

Keep writing php5, It’ll probably be the high paying FORTRAN gig of the 2040s

Why not just stick to the version you're accustomed to?