The fact remains that most users aren't concerned about the efficiency differences in deleting items in an Array
You're basing that on what exactly? That's insane. The inefficiency of using hash tables that way is ridiculous.
if the minor API differences are really that scary, it's trivial to wrap the /hadd and $hget identifiers into a /array and $array combo which hides all of the "confusing" hash specific functionality.
They're two fundamentally different concepts. It isn't a "minor API difference". It isn't just "hash specific" functionality, there'd also be "array specific functionality", because the two things only marginally overlap which is why it's stupid to try and combine the two at all.
a few very popular languages do fine without array implementations. I'm speaking of course about Javascript and PHP
PHP's conflagration of lists and mappings into a single "array" is one of the major flaws in the language. And Javascript has (mostly) proper arrays. The associative array behaviour available in Javascript is inherent to all objects as another means of accessing their properties. The consequences of that lead to some of the most broken parts of the language (eg. being unable to prototype new Array methods because they'll appear as items on any for loops).
