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I agree with the article author. Their Full Site Editing move became a lagging factor on their adoption. Specially when they complicated it further by marrying

I agree with the article author. Their Full Site Editing move became a lagging factor on their adoption. Specially when they complicated it further by marrying with React as their front-end counterpart. I consider WordPress a legacy codebase, because they seem to be unable to drop PHP 5.6 support. Anything that doesn't conform to that standard when submitting a new plugin to their repository, gets rejected immediately (I've seen this first hand). I understand that breaking with their PHP 5.6 past implies being reborn into a next generation CMS, because many shared hostings that are able to run WordPress are set up that way, that'd break a great part of that 42.9% of the Internet. It requires a complete rewrite and marking the current one as a legacy product. It's what holds them back, technologically-wise. WordPress became the dinosaur it sought to destroy when Matt Mullenweg forked it from b2/cafelog.

ivanmontillam 4y ago
To further extend my own comment: I don't know if you believe in "technical debt" but there's definitely the existence of "product debt". If your product isn't matching customer requirements, or if you're trying to pull one of "I am the master and people will love what I do", you increase the risk of market contact dissonance, fancy term for: you're not responding to customers' needs or wants. WordPress is a behemoth that has been losing touch with its customers, carried over in the meantime by the train of recommendations and network effects; but that bubble is about to explode, imho.
Robotbeat 4y ago
Is it a good idea to drop PHP support? PHP is very powerful and for all the hate, has a relatively gentle learning curve. Or maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying.
- ivanmontillam 4y ago
  It's a good idea to drop PHP 5.6 support. From what I understand PHP 7.x onwards is awesome. I've not experienced that myself as I moved to Python 3.x long before PHP 7.x came out, but I trust the word of my friends.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Oh, I understand now. Thank you.

ivanmontillam 4y ago

To further extend my own comment: I don't know if you believe in "technical debt" but there's definitely the existence of "product debt". If your product isn't matching customer requirements, or if you're trying to pull one of "I am the master and people will love what I do", you increase the risk of market contact dissonance, fancy term for: you're not responding to customers' needs or wants. WordPress is a behemoth that has been losing touch with its customers, carried over in the meantime by the train of recommendations and network effects; but that bubble is about to explode, imho.

Robotbeat 4y ago

Is it a good idea to drop PHP support? PHP is very powerful and for all the hate, has a relatively gentle learning curve. Or maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying.

ivanmontillam 4y ago
It's a good idea to drop PHP 5.6 support. From what I understand PHP 7.x onwards is awesome. I've not experienced that myself as I moved to Python 3.x long before PHP 7.x came out, but I trust the word of my friends.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Oh, I understand now. Thank you.