The lust has nothing to do with the syntax and everything to do with the functionality. Namespaces are long overdue in PHP (how has it taken so long)?

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 :)