I'll buy that - the fact that the pretty essential vlookup function defaults to guessing when it can't find a value, rather than defaulting to "Couldn't find the value you were looking to" - has been the source of endless errors.
Explicit really reduces the number of errors you run into - there's a lot of implicit going on in a spreadsheet.
I think you'll find that VLOOKUP is not used that much by people deeply invested in the modelling field. It is dangerous in the same way as referring to cell addresses in macros. (This is where named ranges are particularly useful)
As soon as the structure of your lookup table changes, your VLOOKUP formulas risk being invalidated. After being burned a bunch of times, I've switched to INDEX or a INDEX/MATCH to accomplish the same sort of thing. With INDEX/MATCH, you are required to be explicit in selecting both the range of the data and of the key.
Explicit really reduces the number of errors you run into - there's a lot of implicit going on in a spreadsheet.