[smsm42]

References have their uses, but they are not the simplest concept. For people that think references are like C pointers it is indeed better and safer to never use them. For the rest of people, in about 90% of cases you think you need them you actually don't. But the remaining 10% is still there.

[wvenable]

The only place I can see that references still have some value is for "out" parameters on functions. But, since it's easy to do multiple return values in PHP, even that is not terribly relevant.