Twig help or hindrance

Just a side note, if you plan on using the 'echo shorttag' like <?= $variable ?> be sure you don't want to support PHP<5.4. Prior to PHP5.4 if you disabled php shorttags you disabled the this echo function as well. Since 5.4 it's better seperated, even if you turn off php shorttags (like the 'normal' opening tag <? instead of <?php) you can still use the short echo tag.

To be ontopic, I'm more in line with @skunkbad. I do share the opinion that {{ variable }} looks pretty nice, but less technical staff (designers) still  fuck things up because they dont understand. And a fresh junior developer will need to learn another language to make sense of this, while <?php echo $variable ?> should be clear.