I totally get what you're saying, but this right here is kind of the problem: > Maybe I was creating simple examples to teach others the basics of getting user

I totally get what you're saying, but this right here is kind of the problem: > Maybe I was creating simple examples to teach others the basics of getting user input and working with it in a database. I'm one of the countless people who learned PHP off of examples that do just that, for clarity, and it was years before I learned that it was not meant to be a real-world example. Sites that offer such examples (I'm looking at you, w3schools) are probably responsible for 90% of all the bad code that shows up on lists like this, because the exchange amounts to: Student: "How do I do XYZ?" Teacher: "It's easy! Just do 123." Student: "Thanks!" <leaves, closes door> Teacher (to empty room): "Haha, just kidding. You should really forget that entirely and do 456 instead." I don't think it's valuable to learn about mysql_query("delete from `tbl` where id = {$_GET['id']}") at all in the first place, if you just have to unlearn it and start doing it the right way later. It doesn't actually simplify anything.