The problem is not awkward syntax of PHP. Main problem is that PHP is a specialized language. For example it does not have built-in threading. Posix threading is not universally available for PHP. Python and Java has it's own VM-backed threading everywhere. Java is suitable platform to build OS. PHP is not. Even web server backend itself is rarely implemented in PHP. http://www.artima.com/insidejvm/ed2/jvm.html "Complete feature" language should be suitable to build OS. Perhaps Zend VM could be "beefed up" itself to make PHP the same class as Java. Dmitriy