In case you haven’t come across it, there’s a great PHP advocacy website here: http://beta.usephp.net/
Some excellent articles there. In particular, just been reading the interview with Zeev Suraski.
This raises a number of important issues;
The lack of “low level” C++ coders building PHP extensions
The need for more XML support (esp. SOAP)
And most importantly: the lack of girls working in the PHP group!
Very intersesting article. There are many php scripts/apps that have been devloped and could benefit from being turned into extensions. This enable performance gains as well as make the extensions easier to manage and distribute.