On the heels of this posting yesterday about templating engines, I was sent an email from a friend of mine (HolyGoat) on the subject, and it appears he really does have something to say on the topic.

His approach? Templates are good, but only in moderation. Things like Smarty take it a bit too far and almost have their own language embedded inside. He makes a lot of valid points for templating engines, especially in instances when other people are going to be editing/creating the code for the site that may not know PHP (specifically, designers).

Personally, I agree on most counts with this piece. I admit, I have XSL stylesheets for this site in production to separate the data from the presentation, and it sure makes it nice. But, what do you think? Are templating systems a good thing? Can the world do without them? Is PHP the ultimate templating system anyway? Post your comments/flames/etc...