Just to be clear; I realise my comments alluding to Java were extremely lazy short-hand - I did specifically call out Play right at the end as an example of a J

Just to be clear; I realise my comments alluding to Java were extremely lazy short-hand - I did specifically call out Play right at the end as an example of a Java framework for which over-engineering wasn't really the case. Thankfully I haven't had much exposure to Magento, but your comments chime with things other people have said - one cynical wag I know declaring that it seemed to be specifically designed with the consultancy business in mind. I have had exposure to SugarCRM, and I could say the same things you just did about cognitive load and development practices effectively being a barrier to entry to some actually quite nice code.