Not only is it bad practice, but as the article points out, there is a performance hit. The reason is because @ makes the PHP engine switch between rendering m

Not only is it bad practice, but as the article points out, there is a performance hit. The reason is because @ makes the PHP engine switch between rendering modes. Basically it's as if you have an extra <?php ?> in there. Do that a lot and it adds up. So it's bad on every level.