Out of the Comments: PHP's Long-Awaited Generics Arrive

PHP developers have long written generics in PHPDoc comments because the language lacked native support, leaving static analyzers to guess at type intentions. A new RFC proposes adding native generic syntax using type erasure—a compile-time feature that avoids the runtime performance costs that stalled previous attempts. This move could finally resolve a decade-long debate and bring PHP's static typing capabilities to the level of Java and TypeScript while maintaining full backward compatibility.