I could have been clearer with what I meant there, and I agree with you: it's not a problem specific to PHP, and in some ways it's unfair to label beginners' mistakes as problems in the first place.

The point I wanted to emphasize is that by reading lists like these new users might think that this is a good way to write PHP, whereas I strongly disagree with this list existing in the first place.

There's also the slightly selfish point of view of not wanting to have to clean up code like this should I come across it in future ;)