First, I would suggest that [long winded arrogance] means you either didn't listen to or didn't understand what your friend was saying. And PHP's short path to hell is not loose types, but its' (early versions, mind you, and therefore most of the installed base) over-reliance on GLOBAL FUCKING VARIABLES. This can be the short path to hell with Perl, too, which is why we have the "use strict" pragma, as well as locals.