I had a little trouble with this one myself. Apparently there was a lot of '<' + elementType + '>' + value + doClosingTag(); kind of junk all over the place. Add to the mix javascript that called a web service and got pricing and another piece of javascript that called a different web service that adjusted pricing based on sales.
I'm not going to defend this practice or design. I would never have let something like that get anywhere near production myself.
You see a lot of people in this thread who don't feel that separation of code and display information is important. Imagine how that looks in an agile environment where nobody steps back to look at the big picture and developer turnover is high - like maybe a model that included churning offshore resources in and out as requirements demanded it. It's bad.
I've seen this kind of thing in action. One particular case that sticks out in my memory involved function calls that didn't actually exist but were caught by magic methods and created on the fly. That one took me and another dev a few days to track down. If you find it hard to believe, you're either lucky or are severely underestimating the power of stupid.
I'm not going to defend this practice or design. I would never have let something like that get anywhere near production myself.
You see a lot of people in this thread who don't feel that separation of code and display information is important. Imagine how that looks in an agile environment where nobody steps back to look at the big picture and developer turnover is high - like maybe a model that included churning offshore resources in and out as requirements demanded it. It's bad.