The -> style is certainly NOT a PHP invention, it is a C feature, it means "access a member and dereference the pointer", I just used -> as an example, . could just as easily be used. However, I thought . was a bad idea since that is already how mIRC uses properties. Is $someclass(blah).%count saying access the member of someclass called blah with member %count or is it saying $prop = %count? -> solves this ambiguity.

And you are right, Khaled did say switch() is on his to-do list, however he also implied that it is very low on his list.