I'm a big fan of PHP and it's obviously a very weakly-typed language. I realize some of the benefits include the general independence of changing variable types on the fly and such.
What I'm wondering about are the drawbacks. What can you get out of a strongly-typed language like C that you otherwise can't get from a weakly-typed one like PHP? Also with type setting (like double($variable)), one could argue that even a weakly-typed language can act just like a strongly-typed one.
So. Weak-type. What are some benefits I didn't include? More importantly, what are the drawbacks?
You have to understand that PHP was created for the context of web applications. Everything in the context of the web is a string. Therefore it is very rare where strong typing would be beneficial.
What are the benefits (and drawbacks) of a weakly typed language?