Completely agree - looking back at some of the code I wrote in PHP3 there were huge issues with the language but it was more that I had no idea what I was doing than an inherent problem in the language (granted, PHP5 is lightyears ahead of PHP3 and I'm certain that the improvements have made writing good code easier). Today, it has all the tools that if you learn better general coding practices (like MVC or at the very least separation of presentation from logic) it doesn't get in the way and you can just do what you want. I actually think the $$ syntax can be useful, but like anything it matters how you are using it.