The point is not to argue some kind of replacement of scheme for PHP. Or one language's superiority to another. The point is to show its possible to write functional, good looking PHP. Letting the "neat things" of LISP influence the way you write in other languages. Internalizing concepts that are first class in other languages by trying to adapt them to a language where they aren't first class is a great way to learn. Learning and being influenced by other's great ideas is how all languages and communities make progress. This is why Scala is such an incredible language to experience. It was shameless in its influences and its desire to merge OO and FP. Making connections between disparate languages like the layman's PHP and the academian's Scheme is exercise for the mind.
"The point is to show its possible to write functional, good looking PHP"
If you say curly braces and type prefixes can ever be pretty... ;-)
Lisp is not just a collection of neat ideas - it's a cohesive whole more or less found around those neat ideas. It's damn hard to take out those ideas and to put them in a language that was not designed around them without corrupting them beyond recognition.
And mind you I label myself as a Python enthusiast, not a Lisper. But I know what my tools can and what my tools can't do.
I agree that this is a neat thing that the folks who write PHP have done, good for them (no sarcasm), they've improved their impoverished language a little bit, like giving a starving kid a bicycle.
It's just hard sometimes for me to keep my mouth shut when I see articles titled "PHP as sexy as Scheme", even when rationally I know that the author probably didn't really mean that literally. To me, it's like someone saying "DOS like OS X, now with 32-bit graphics!"
