“I use Firebug daily, and I’ve used the console to run code on the fly a grand total of two times – and one of them was just for the sake of trying it.”

It would seem you haven’t done much serious javascript debugging, or at the very least don’t understand how helpful the console can be in doing so. Don’t impose your own limitations on others. You sound absolutely ridiculous using this example as a basis for argument.

Moving on…

“PHP and JavaScript can’t sandbox though, so you’d be living a fools paradise to use eval() in those places.”

Again, bold claims without a true understanding of what you’re talking about. Sandboxing is not a function of any particular language. Python doesn’t have built-in sandboxing with it’s eval. Sand boxing is the act of running code in a process with limited privileges. It is completely independent of the code being run. What’s particularly funny about your javascript comment is that the vast majority of javascript written is run within a sand box, right inside the browser.

Just a bit of advice if you plan on working as a programmer. Stop assuming you know everything. You’ll be much more successful if you assume you know nothing.