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Maybe. But the fact is PHP as a language is messy, albeit some frameworks have made it better (i.e Laravel). I'm assessing Wordpress because of it's praise by m

Maybe. But the fact is PHP as a language is messy, albeit some frameworks have made it better (i.e Laravel). I'm assessing Wordpress because of it's praise by many people when it's not well built (have you looked at the codebase?). Just look at the author and history of PHP, the author hates computer science, and it was derived from Perl as a templating engine, not something I'd hold as quality. Nonetheless frameworks have made it better but I still feel the platform is broken and often attributed with newcomers to web development.

krapp 13y ago
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone praise Wordpress code if they've had to work with it, apart from actual contributors to the WP core of course. Wordpress is popular almost entirely because it's easy to deploy and has a vast ecosystem of plugins and themes which mostly just work. You could probably build a competing CMS in, say Laravel 4, replace the plugin system with Composer packages or something similar, use Twig and PDO out of the box, and have a much more elegant and modern system that probably almost no one would use, unless the user experience was just as brainless as it is with Wordpress. Which is also one reason why, I think, despite all the arguments in their favor, static site generators (which do get mentioned now and then as an alternative to WP) still have a while to go before they're ready for mainstream use. It's not enough that it's well coded, it has to be easy too, and easy wins out over pretty every time.
- pestaa 13y ago
  Using WordPress is not as brainless as you point it out to be. All software needs to be learned, and from my experience let me tell you WordPress is not always learnt well. WordPress is being pushed only because the majority of web developers can tinker with PHP only.
  - krapp 13y ago
    WordPress is being pushed only because the majority of web developers can tinker with PHP only. I think you're forgetting that most of the people who use Wordpress aren't web developers at all, and most of the 'web developers' who use Wordpress probably can't code much, either, because they won't need to. The ease of the Wordpress install is something they advertise. Once you ever have to touch the code, yes, it's a nightmare, even if you're inured to the horrors of php code. Most 'web development' jobs with Wordpress involve the install, setting up themes, maybe editing the css and installing plugins (because even that is still more arcane than some non-technical bloggers and people want to deal with.) The "low bar for entry" for PHP comes up as an epithet now and again, but if you're trying to increase the adoption of your particular language, having an application the plebs can run isn't necessarily a bad thing. Does anything similar exist in the Python or Ruby worlds yet, for which someone wouldn't be expected to know how to use a terminal, or handle git? It is, I think, almost entirely down to being less of a hassle than anything else out there, and especially less of a hassle than anything not written in PHP. Call it laziness if you will, and I wouldn't entirely disagree with you.
astrodust 13y ago
PHP was built by a guy who didn't even know he was building a programming language. He's quite honest about this. PHP is like Perl blended with C and a whole lot of confusion. Frameworks have made it "better" like ketchup improves the quality of prison food, but it's still terrible on the whole.

krapp 13y ago

I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone praise Wordpress code if they've had to work with it, apart from actual contributors to the WP core of course. Wordpress is popular almost entirely because it's easy to deploy and has a vast ecosystem of plugins and themes which mostly just work. You could probably build a competing CMS in, say Laravel 4, replace the plugin system with Composer packages or something similar, use Twig and PDO out of the box, and have a much more elegant and modern system that probably almost no one would use, unless the user experience was just as brainless as it is with Wordpress. Which is also one reason why, I think, despite all the arguments in their favor, static site generators (which do get mentioned now and then as an alternative to WP) still have a while to go before they're ready for mainstream use. It's not enough that it's well coded, it has to be easy too, and easy wins out over pretty every time.

pestaa 13y ago
Using WordPress is not as brainless as you point it out to be. All software needs to be learned, and from my experience let me tell you WordPress is not always learnt well. WordPress is being pushed only because the majority of web developers can tinker with PHP only.
- krapp 13y ago
  WordPress is being pushed only because the majority of web developers can tinker with PHP only. I think you're forgetting that most of the people who use Wordpress aren't web developers at all, and most of the 'web developers' who use Wordpress probably can't code much, either, because they won't need to. The ease of the Wordpress install is something they advertise. Once you ever have to touch the code, yes, it's a nightmare, even if you're inured to the horrors of php code. Most 'web development' jobs with Wordpress involve the install, setting up themes, maybe editing the css and installing plugins (because even that is still more arcane than some non-technical bloggers and people want to deal with.) The "low bar for entry" for PHP comes up as an epithet now and again, but if you're trying to increase the adoption of your particular language, having an application the plebs can run isn't necessarily a bad thing. Does anything similar exist in the Python or Ruby worlds yet, for which someone wouldn't be expected to know how to use a terminal, or handle git? It is, I think, almost entirely down to being less of a hassle than anything else out there, and especially less of a hassle than anything not written in PHP. Call it laziness if you will, and I wouldn't entirely disagree with you.

astrodust 13y ago

PHP was built by a guy who didn't even know he was building a programming language. He's quite honest about this. PHP is like Perl blended with C and a whole lot of confusion. Frameworks have made it "better" like ketchup improves the quality of prison food, but it's still terrible on the whole.