title: Why do we need the CakePHP HTML Link helper?
body: <p>I am teaching myself the CakePHP framework. I see that CakePHP comes with a bunch of helpers, for example, the HTML helper. In the docs, I see that you can write</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $this-&gt;Html-&gt;link('Enter', '/pages/home', array('class' =&gt; 'button', 'target' =&gt; '_blank'));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and it will display</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="/pages/home" class="button" target="_blank"&gt;Enter&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What exactly has this helper gained us? Both seem to be equally easy to write.</p>