To some degree, I'd say the archaicness of WordPress (is that a word?) might be part of why it's so popular. Because it's coded in a way that anyone can (fairly

To some degree, I'd say the archaicness of WordPress (is that a word?) might be part of why it's so popular. Because it's coded in a way that anyone can (fairly easily) figure out how to code themes or add ons without needing to know a lot about programming. Contrast to many 'better built' frameworks which require you to know more than basic copy and pasting/very old school procedural programming and you've got a system which while less liked by professionals/experts is exactly what your amateur coder or hobbyist wants/can easily get used to. Kind of like why HTML 5 won out over XML in the end. Because one was simple enough to get used to and met average Joe's needs and one was a bit of a pain in the ass that only 'experts' were patient enough to use. So yeah, it doesn't follow a lot of recommended patterns and has an archaic coding style and all that, but it comes with the plus side that it's easier to develop stuff for.