Question

How is this working? Shouldn’t this throw an error, since I am trying to call a non static method statically? Basically, I’ve never instantiated an object of type something.

class Something {
   public function helloworld() {
       echo 'hello world';
   }
}

Something::helloworld();

Answer 1

Put this at the top of your script:

error_reporting( E_ALL | E_STRICT ); // E_STRICT is important here
ini_set( 'display_errors', true );

… and see what happens then:

Strict Standards: Non-static method Something::helloworld() should not
be called statically in […]

Admittedly, it more of a notice than an error though. Your script will happily continue to run.