What on God's green earth gave you the idea that PHP has either closures or first-class functions? PHP, in its current version, has a Closure class whose name is an outright lie, and which, along with some really nasty syntactic sugar, constitute the basis for PHP's equally dishonest claim to have finally gained first-class functions. It's not just that the rest is broken -- it's not even just that this stuff is broken too; it's that the people responsible for it either don't mind lying about it, or they genuinely believe they're telling the truth. I'm not actually sure which prospect disgusts me more.