Let the programmer shoot himself (or herself) in the foot. I do not believe a language's job is to hold a programmer's hand. A programmer will write good code or bad code. A language cannot change that.
Variable variables allow for easy class reflection. I'm curious to hear other uses of variable variables.
In a perfect world, inhabited by fantastic engineers and no one else, aye. So Graham's slogan may hold true for LISP hackers, or possibly even the dynamic languages crowd (Perl, Python, Ruby and their ilk).
PHP, however, is primarily used by either incompetent or inexperienced or deadline-driven people. Under such circumstances you want a language that protects your foot with six layers of hardened steel. If Python was the prevalent language for these groups, I suspect we'd see a lot less security holes and general terribleness. Alas, PHP dominates that market, and people shoot themselves in the foot all the damn time.
To cut a long story short: Give an experienced engineer a powerful, flexible language such as modern PHP, and he will make good use of it. Give a 15-year-old dude in his bedroom the very same language, and hilarity ensues.
See: http://paulgraham.com/langdes.html
Let the programmer shoot himself (or herself) in the foot. I do not believe a language's job is to hold a programmer's hand. A programmer will write good code or bad code. A language cannot change that.
Variable variables allow for easy class reflection. I'm curious to hear other uses of variable variables.