Ree wrote:
i have noticed that quite a lot of the comments on it were rather negative, although for me it looked like a pretyy good way.
Templating is a bit of a holy-war topic in PHP (right up there with indention style, brackets-on-their-own-lines, and which editor to use).
That article also happens to be written in a fairly hostile tone, so people with a different point of view may feel attacked by it. (A vi user reading an article that says "Anyone that lives on a planet where vi is useful can get back to me" might spur similar responses).
The arguments on both sides are fairly strong, and accurate. PHP can be its own templating engine, and in fact (depending on your interpretation) began as one. It can allow a fairly strong seperation of content, and accomplish most of what a template engine can.
On the flip side, there is a reason that sites like Yahoo use template engines like Smarty - because they work. They also allow strong seperation of content, and do it with a fairly reasonable overhead.
It all comes down to what goals you have. Right now, the simplistic "Should I use template engines or not" may boil down to what you feel like doing. Someday, however, it may be a matter of whether the 100+ developers you work with can learn, support, and maintain an app written to {use|not use} template engines.
Its very relative.
(But vi just plain sucks)