> For example, I was informed by an inexperienced developer a couple of years ago that it was now considered (by who?) 'best practice' to leave out the closing tags in PHP files. WTF?
With this statement, I can't decide if you are being serious or just having a good laugh.
> Perhaps 85% of PHP (we could almost say web) projects are fire-and-forget, with minimal maintenance.
Keep in mind, your knowledge is based on your environment. If you work with bad code, that's all you know. I don't, so I don't realize what it's like working "in the wild."
Please read the other comments in this thread with regards to the closing tag nonsense.
As for the "I don't work with bad code because I wrote it myself or in this particular small environment" comment, that's great. I have worked in many countries, so I have a fairly broad experience, and IMHO much of the webcode industry to be pretty fire-and-forget vs. other areas of programming.
With this statement, I can't decide if you are being serious or just having a good laugh.
> Perhaps 85% of PHP (we could almost say web) projects are fire-and-forget, with minimal maintenance.
Keep in mind, your knowledge is based on your environment. If you work with bad code, that's all you know. I don't, so I don't realize what it's like working "in the wild."