Re: (OT) Templating laziness

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Chris Lott wrote: > > Another possibility that I meant to mention is that template systems > > provide a familiar environment for people coming over from a ColdFusion > > background. CF is, after all, essentially a template system, as opposed > > to a programming language. > > I'm coming to PHP from a CF background, and I don't grok this idea. Without > a war over which is better, CF and PHP seem very similar to me in their > basic idea. In a PHP page I will: I don't see it as an issue of better, rather an issue of different. So yeah, a holy war hardly seems necessary. (snip) > I don't see why one is more a "template" language than the other? Many > operations take more verbiage to accomplish in CF, particularly if one > doesn't use CFSCRIPT tags, but not all... Well, what's the primary thing Allaire markets CF as? A rapid way to provide a web interface to a database. In other words, templates. It doesn't need to do much, but what it does, it does pretty well. I also make the distinction by pointing out that CF has virtually no application if it isn't integrated (That is, both are in the same file) with HTML, whereas PHP stands by itself, and does so well. So essentially I see it as a difference in focus, or perhaps more accurately a change in focus. PHP began as a template system also, after all. However as more and more functions were added and it expanded more, calling it a template system ceased to be accurate. CF has grown, but remained firmly within the bounds of its intended purpose. Maybe that's just a difference between a commercial product and an open source project. Matt