[babel17]

I think this falls into the category "As simple as possible, but not simpler". Doing abstraction right is a very hard thing indeed and requires the right training and education. None of the creators of the current frameworks have had those, and therefore their creations may be brilliant, but flawed. When an abstraction is done right, you won't feel any pressing need to go beyond it. When it is not done right, you are happy that at least it is "leaky", but calling this leakiness a feature just misses the point in the first place.

[tintin]

Totally agree. Some time ago I saw a html template engine with something like this:

  $framework->outputTextInput("name", "value", "class");

And after running +50 lines of code this would be the output:

  <input type="text" name="name" value="value" class="class"/>

It had nothing to do with keeping the state of the app or something, just outputting HTML...