Marco Tabini has a new blog post today with a look forward into the year 2006 with some predictions, ideas, and comments about the year to come.

There are clear signs afoot that the PHP world is undergoing yet another transformation. They are still difficult to make out, but they have actually been there for a while now—as early as a couple of months ago, I remember commenting to someone that 2006 will be our year of confusion, and it could not be more evident to me that we’re well on the way to a juncture that could spell disaster for PHP.

It’s easy to see these forces at work in the PHP world: new features are suggested all the time—and sometimes implemented after having been beaten to death in a public forum.

He also suggests that maybe PHP5 was released "prematurely" with all of the PHP6 talk that's been happening more and more. He thinks that 2006 will be a Year of Confusion (with The Switch getting more underway).

What really bothers me, however, is the fact that some of the people I speak with seem to think that PHP is just too well established to lose out to something as “fresh” as Ruby. Perhaps they forget how PHP itself has the habit of sneaking into the enterprise through the back door—usually as a drop-in replacement for more complex solutions that come with too much baggage.