Autoloading allows one to specify modules by their logical, namespaced identifiers rather than simply importing a file. One benefit is that one can swap out the

Autoloading allows one to specify modules by their logical, namespaced identifiers rather than simply importing a file. One benefit is that one can swap out the implementation without necessarily changing the code. I've had to override some badly-behaved libraries that way. Generally speaking, while I don't think this is satire, I would hate to see someone code this way, unless the point was simply to learn how the components of a web framework work together. This is not "framework-less PHP", it's just a DIY framework, and not a particularly good one. I think that attempting to create a web application without a framework is at best needlessly duplicative of effort, and at worst an open invitation to security flaws and spaghetti code. The author says, "This is not an anti-framework screed," and it's certainly not polemical. However, I think it's probably more representative of the Zend-ecosystem way of doing things rather than PHP best practices: accretion, as opposed to design.