73 also (and I can't believe I am saying this) the way that you use a variable to read out a property of an object in php actually kind of makes more sense in most cases then in other languages
In Lua for example, you probably use this syntax to read stuff from a table (assuming you know for 100% sure its there)
some.stuff
in php you do
$some->stuff
now, lets make stuff a variable
lua:
some[stuff]
php
$some->$stuff
See how the syntax in php almost completely stays the same and you can still see we are talking about using a variable to read the property due to the $ sign?
Now, I still would prefer the Lua syntax but I can't ignore the fact that PHP is more consistent in this regard (for as long as we aren't looking up another object/array)