…Continued from Frameworks vs. Hard-Coding Debate
@PJ
ermm wordpress is oop, where’s your argument?
@Jarret There’s no OOP in wp-content, which is where I spend the majority of my time. I rarely change the core code, which yes has changed a lot since I started using it.
You’re right, WP is no longer a simple little script and I’m not spending as much time on it for that reason. The build-measure-learn loop of WP is now too inflexible for significant innovation. So I’m spending more time on my own apps.
With every new version of WP there’s more and more bloat. Take for instance the “widgets” of WordPress. That idea is to make things drag and drop in a standard way for the average person off the street who now wants a blog and is already familiar with how Windows and/or Mac operating systems work. So here we go again, put everything in a box and make us jump through hoops to get there–like I’m back in the 80s when Windows 3.1 came out.
I think Matt Mullenweg said his goal was to make blogging simple enough for his mom. This explains the increased emphasis on Wordpress.com and the hand-me-down direction of Wordpress.org. I’m guessing his “make it easy for mom” realization came later, after WP came included with cpanel and jumped in popularity with webmasters. The problem here is, to make mom comfortable you end up with 10x as much code that does essentially the same thing as before. Yes, now your mom can use it but also it’s harder to customize, and it’s probably slower and eats up more memory.
WP is increasing in popularity but I think its success is somewhat tied to RSS. If Google ever announced they will pay less attention to RSS going forward, I think you would see WP lose favor from that point onward.
The OOP in WordPress looks more like spaghetti to me, it takes a while to find things now. I want to change something but I can’t find the function I need. And now with their crazy caching mechanisms (which seem to change every year) I’m even more lost in the core code. I see functions calling functions calling cache functions calling functions calling functions all over the place (multiple files) that don’t seem to add any value with each additional layer increasingly disconnected from wp-content. You got to draw the line somewhere, how many functions do we really need to post a blog to the Internet?
Is the medium the message too? Do programmers have a resonating influence emanating from deep within the core of web apps everywhere? I say yes. And here there is a great confluence, on the open web. Choose your frameworks wisely. LOL.