title: How to make PHP more Javatized (aka strongly typed, more robust)?
body: <p>I really love PHP because:<br>
  _ easy to develop web applications (you set up LAMP in 10 minutes and you are ready to go)<br>
  _ easy to learn<br>
  _ easy to deploy (you just need Apache with the PHP module)  </p>
  
  <p>I really love Java because:<br>
  _ it is strongly typed</p>
  
  <p>I was amazed by developing with Java and Netbeans. Any time there was a type mismatch I was alerted by the IDE while developing and the IDE itself was suggesting the fix.</p>
  
  <p>I think <strong>strong typing is a bliss</strong>. That's true: PHP arrays that can contain anything speed up your development, but then you have to spend time finding bugs while with a little more work ahead you have the IDE that points out the problems for you.
  That makes me feel more confidence also during refactoring.</p>
  
  <p>So, my question is: is it possible to use types in PHP (including for the return value of a method)?
  Do you know of a project, a fork, anything that would allow me to do that?<br>
  It could be just a pre-parser that checks some comments before the actual PHP parser (i.e. <code>public function /*ConfBuilders[]*/ getConfBuilders(/*int*/ confId)</code>).<br>
  Please anything that would introduce a concept of type and, thus, in my opinion, would make a PHP application more robust and, eventually, quicker to implement (right now I think it is quicker to develop software in Java than in PHP, thanks to the IDE's help).</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,<br>
  Dan</p>
  
  <p>EDIT:
  This is the only thing I have found on the web:<br>
  <a href="http://cstruter.com/blog/44" rel="noreferrer">http://cstruter.com/blog/44</a>
  but I don't like it, mainly because you can't declare the object properties in a standard way and for sure make the execution of the script slower. I would like a method that works offline, while developing...a sort of compilation.</p>