The main problem isn't templating engines. And although a better solution is always welcome, a bit of procedural code inside a template is not a big problem eit

The main problem isn't templating engines. And although a better solution is always welcome, a bit of procedural code inside a template is not a big problem either. The real problem is that so many projects and frameworks don't have a powerful enough View layer that is separate from the (preferably optional) templating engine. In many cases it's even worse, and the templating engine is the entire implementation of the view layer. This pushes a lot of view logic into the templates, where it quickly degenerates into spaghetti. (In even worse cases, any logic the templating engine can't handle gets coded inside the controllers, and view logic starts leaking through the layers.) Fragmentation into purely static templates is only a solution if you've dealt with with all the other view-related issues, and still end up with too much logic in your templates. And by "too much" I mean that it results in errors and maintenance overhead, not just that it looks ugly. Intensive use of logic inside templates is definitely a code smell, but you have to be careful not to address the wrong problem. The templating method itself is rarely the root cause.