From Slashdot: PHP Gets Namespace Separators, With a Twist. I've never been a big fan of PHP. Yes, it's easy to get up and running, and there are about a bajillion PHP developers out there, but I've always felt that it was a language with no clear direction behind it, riddled with inconsistencies and features that were not well thought out. This latest decision to use '\' as the namespace separator in PHP is simply braindead. Most programming languages in use today use '\' as an escape character. Including, I should add, PHP!!!. Maybe you're supposed to think of using '\' to 'escape' from one namespace into the next? What's wrong with '::'? It's not like PHP prizes readability or brevity. How about '.'? Oh wait, that's right, '.' is used for string concatenation (wouldn't want to use '+' for that...) So yeah, I'm just happy I haven't had to do much in the way of PHP work lately. Any chance I get, I use Python for web stuff, usually with Pylons.