Along with the active development of PHP Version 5, PHP Version 6 is also under development. As of December 2009, it has no date set for release. The major changes involved in PHP Version 6 include:

• Unicode support
• Scurity improvements which removes the loathed register_globals, magic_quotes, and safe_mode
• Along with many other optimizations and features yet to be announced.

In conclusion...

As you can see, PHP started from humble beginnings - and has rapidly grown to the beheamoth it is today. Personally, I think it's the best language available for web development. It is easy to pick up and learn, and is quite powerful. If you've not tried PHP before, give it a try - you'll like it, I promise.