I've heard it differently, but is a corollary: bad tools make it easy for bad developers to do bad things. Good tools make it easy for bad developers to do good things.
Why do you care about bad developers? They won't do good things either way.
This is one of those things that are obvious in the specific, but we're talking in abstract terms.
Most people, in my experience, are both good and bad developers in different measures. Tools that help the bad developer therefore help all developers in those moments when we make mistakes.
Who get to say if it's good or bad?
We need more "software things".
Users can decide what's good.
A few billion people have decided FB (done in php) is good.
> Do not tell me that Facebook and Wikipedia are built in PHP. I’m aware! They could also be written in Brainfuck, but as long as there are smart enough people wrangling the things, they can overcome problems with the platform. For all we know, development time could be halved or doubled if these products were written in some other language; this data point alone means nothing.