Valhalla Island

My web programming class requires the use of the Smarty templating engine for the first assignment. Actually, I don’t know if it requires it for the first assignment but it definitely does for the second so I want to get my head around it on a smaller problem first. Anyway, Smarty is stupid.

I don’t understand the advantage, apart from people’s irrational fear of the PHP acronym in their files. The way I see it, Smarty is a lot of extra work for slightly different syntax. The syntax isn’t even necessarily much simpler, it’s just different. <?php echo $array['ele']; ?> or <?=$array['ele']=?> (if you’re using shorthand) versus {array.ele} for example. Ok, so it’s a little simpler but I still don’t think it’s at all worth it.

In the past people have pushed for a templating system in WordPress but with PHP template tags like <?php the_title(); ?> it’s unnecessary. Maybe it’s a hang up I have from once working with the massacre that is the Smarty using, X-Cart default theme.