Thanks! Making "handlers" feel like ordinary PHP scripts that execute top-down seems like the most natural way in PHP, since that's how the language itself works. It's not much different than inverting the require statement, your front controller includes your handler after initializing some helpers for you :)

It's not as "structured" as methods in a class that extends a Controller class, but it works just as well and eliminates a good bit of boilerplate code in the process. Also helps new developers get up to speed quickly I've found.