Woah now, it's just a little syntax... relax a little. There's a whole world of programming languages out there with more variations on syntax than you can dream of. Then again, maybe I don't see what the big deal is?
This is going to make developing larger scale projects (and projects that mix and match 3rd-party libraries) very different than pre-5.3
The initial uproar over the backslash failed to provide any commentary on the underlying implementation. I regret conflating the syntax with the implementation because the implementation is rock solid. The syntax, with a little practice, winds up feeling more natural than you'd think (or perhaps feel comfortable admitting :)
Like all widely used languages it evolves more slowly than those with smaller or niche communities. The PHP devs focus has clearly been stability and integrating the most widely used extensions into the core.
As you yourself said, "so goes the life of a language whose design is driven by demand and not theory."
The big deal is that 99% of the PHP community has no clue about programming, so if they hear someone talking about something they get overly excited about it and start talking about it too. That way they "look smart".
This is not totally unique to PHP, but man, they have a weird-ass community.