No. Like the PHP vulnerability, this was a bug in a language interpreter written in C, and a bug that would not be possible in most newer languages. Even as secure-by-design becomes more prevalent, there will be vulnerabilities, but this one is a taste of the past.
The "Syntax as landmarks" section sounds like he's comparing it particularly to Python. The quirk of `$` denoting a variable did kind of work out for him. Especially compared to Python where you declare a variable by assigning it. But it's not like PHP was designed with a special character for each syntax role. He still needs to use context to infer other roles.
PHP has the advantage of being preinstalled or easy to install in a lot of environments. I had to investigate the blind developer thing because I'm still on the hunt for a second advantage.
If we were talking in the context of large TypeScript projects, you would be right. Central management helps the project avoid adding too many dependencies.
But you replied to a comment that said "for simple standalone tooling scripts in otherwise non-JS/TS projects" where this absolutely is not a bad pattern.
>I thought the latest versions ran actual typescript.
That's by design. Deno smoothly hides the fact that TS needs to be converted to JS for V8 to run it. Similar to how it smoothly hides everything about npm.
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