The aim is to keep the philosophy of PHP but adapt it to be more in sync with the Web of 2010.

• less $, less ‘;’ like in javascript
• secure by default: no eval, no magic quotes/string interpolation
• full unicode support
• no from/to string auto-conversion
• XML literal
• JSON literal
• a SQL compatible syntax
• XPath/XQuery compatible syntax (partial support)
• URI syntax (partial support)
• duck typing
• a dynamic language with a gradual type system
• dynamic compilation to JVM bytecode using new invokedynamic support (partial support)
• provide an embedded database derby and a standalone web server grizzly by default
• can run on top of any JEE stacks, it’s a JVM language !