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Drupal: 15 years old

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Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#21

Post by jacquesm »

audessuscest wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a pretty big advantage if you're an end-user who doesn't know how to create migrations. Such a migration should be created by drupal, not by the end-user in a proper design, you know, like everybody else does it. > The whole point is that you shouldn't be poking around in the DB most of the time (I will admit that this is a principle frequently violated). DB's tend to become the place to hook into other syst…

Sorry but you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. > I don't think drupal had any actual design goals You dont THINK? Well maybe you should LEARN and then you will KNOW. Actually Drupal is very good (the best framework I know) for migration and interoperating with other software. But you don't do that by connecting DBs directly like you seems to want to do... (which is wrong with any framework/cms)

> Sorry but you sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

I ran a drupal based business for years and I know the platform - and it's shortcomings - very well.

>> I don't think drupal had any actual design goals

> You dont THINK? Well maybe you should LEARN and then you will KNOW.

Well, I could have used stronger language there but I see no need. Because whatever I would have said you'd have found fault with the form rather than with the content. Believe me, I've spent enough time repairing and porting installations of drupal from one release to the next to know for a fact that their design goals are about as flexible as a rubber band and that they fail to deliver on the most basic ones (performance, ease of maintenance, backward compatibility and ease of upgrade).

> Actually Drupal is very good (the best framework I know) for migration and interoperating with other software.

Well, let's say our experiences probably are not identical.

> But you don't do that by connecting DBs directly like you seems to want to do... (which is wrong with any framework/cms)

For better or worse, DBs tend to be a relatively standard item and of course there is a 'right' way to do things (which is different for every platform), but having done several re-builds of large platforms we could probably agree on having a sane database schema and reasonable naming scheme to be a plus in such situations.

So from a pragmatic point of view this 'wrong' way is often the only way to achieve certain goals, and with drupal this way is nailed shut to the point that you are not only locked in to drupal, you are most likely going to end up being locked in to a specific drupal version (due to their modules usually not making it past an upgrade).

FWIW at some point in time I hosted thousands of drupal sites so I think (see, I'm doing it again, so feel free to take another cheap shot at me) that I have enough experience and familiarity with drupal to see it for what it is.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#22

Post by monk_e_boy »

aikah wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the price of a naive approach to maintaining a data model programmatically. This is a very weak point of drupal and the performance overhead it generates is incredible.

> it's the price of a naive approach to maintaining a data model programmatically Are you talking about their node system ?

You should make a view that searches some nodes for a custom field. Wow, it hits the database A LOT.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#23

Post by Luyt »

jacquesm wrote: post #9
smpetrey wrote: post #4

I just started playing around with Drupal for work today. What a serendipitous day :)

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

What's your opinion of WordPress?

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#24

Post by Jgrubb »

jacquesm wrote: post #9
smpetrey wrote: post #4

I just started playing around with Drupal for work today. What a serendipitous day :)

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

I get how you feel about Drupal, but can you please name a better CMS offering?

I've been working with Drupal for 7 years now and have worked with lots of other frameworks and langs in that time. I've had a hot/cold relationship with Drupal for the whole time, and have lately (since D8) had a substantial thaw with my attitude toward Drupal. It's nice because in the last several years of hating it but getting to know it really well, I've come out on the other side being able to get things done in very little time.

So back to the original question - what would recommend instead (and frameworks don't count)? It's got to be something that a non programmer can build their project with.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#25

Post by jacquesm »

Luyt wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

What's your opinion of WordPress?

I don't really have an opinion on wordpress because I haven't used it more than playing around with it for a little bit and fixing some minor performance issues for a website of a friend. I don't see it used much for larger projects though I know there are some pretty large wordpress installations. Better ask someone that really knows the platform.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#26

Post by noir_lord »

jacquesm wrote: post #9
smpetrey wrote: post #4

I just started playing around with Drupal for work today. What a serendipitous day :)

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

> Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff.

Agree with everything you said except this, PHP has recently undergone an renaissance in development, 7 is a huge step forwards (proper AST, the start of an optional type syste, 100% speedup, half the memory usage - I've actually seen these changes on stuff I'm running), composer and the PSR's also helped a great deal.

I expect the split on python/ruby/php to remain pretty constant, Python stuff remains excellent but they aren't doing anything revolutionary in terms of the Web story, Ruby with RoR has made some excellent changes in the new release but in terms of impact I don't think they exceed anything available on PHP.

I'll happily agree that PHP is a horrible language but it's also incredibly productive to program in if you avoid the warty parts (getting easier to do) and approach it like a Python (which I also am) programmer would in terms of writing good maintainable code.

The comment on developers is accurate, there are a lot of PHP "programmers" who fall short of the average in the Python or Ruby community however the total pool of good PHP developers is likely (I don't have metrics so I'm guessing on that one) larger than the total pool of good Python (web anyway, python is everywhere) and Ruby web devs just on community size.

I don't regard having to winnow the chaff a big problem, I'd sooner have more good applicants (in absolute terms) mixed in with a lot of bad applicants than having way less good applicants in a different language.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#27

Post by jacquesm »

Jgrubb wrote: post #24
jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

I get how you feel about Drupal, but can you please name a better CMS offering? I've been working with Drupal for 7 years now and have worked with lots of other frameworks and langs in that time. I've had a hot/cold relationship with Drupal for the whole time, and have lately (since D8) had a substantial thaw with my attitude toward Drupal. It's nice because in the last several years of hating it but getting to know…

Drupal is not really a CMS, it is more of a framework to build a CMS with.

I agree it has gotten better on many fronts since the old days but plenty of my old reservations against drupal still (surprisingly, I expected those would be major focal points for improvement) hold today.

> It's got to be something that a non programmer can build their project with.

That's a huge restriction, and in fact, if a non-programmer can build a project on a self hosted platform then you're essentially asking for trouble with respect to security and future maintenance. I don't really believe such a system could be made if it is at the same time required to be secure and reasonably scalable, unless it is hosted and kept up-to-date and secure by another party.

The fact that wordpress.com is raking in the money is an indication that for simple websites this is definitely a market opportunity, and given the frequency with which self-hosted wordpress sites get hacked the 'non programmer' restriction would seem to be the cause of a bit of a problem. It's like asking for a car that can be constructed by a non-mechanic.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#28

Post by jacquesm »

noir_lord wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save yourself a lot of grief and either go for symfony2 (also quite heavy but a lot better written and much more maintainable than drupal), or laravel (based on symfony2 components). Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. The biggest downside is that you'll find it harder to find progra…

> Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. Agree with everything you said except this, PHP has recently undergone an renaissance in development, 7 is a huge step forwards (proper AST, the start of an optional type syste, 100% speedup, half the memory usage - I've actually seen these chang…

Agreed with everything you wrote here, I should have been more precise.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#29

Post by Jgrubb »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
Jgrubb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get how you feel about Drupal, but can you please name a better CMS offering? I've been working with Drupal for 7 years now and have worked with lots of other frameworks and langs in that time. I've had a hot/cold relationship with Drupal for the whole time, and have lately (since D8) had a substantial thaw with my attitude toward Drupal. It's nice because in the last several years of hating it but getting to know…

Drupal is not really a CMS, it is more of a framework to build a CMS with. I agree it has gotten better on many fronts since the old days but plenty of my old reservations against drupal still (surprisingly, I expected those would be major focal points for improvement) hold today. > It's got to be something that a non programmer can build their project with. That's a huge restriction, and in fact, if a non-programmer…

> It's like asking for a car that can be constructed by a non-mechanic.

I think that's a good analogy actually, but that's the market. Honestly, I think to try and move into the market that WP has so tidily sewn up would be a waste of time and energy so Drupal has aimed for the higher end of the market - large institutions and companies with content mgmt needs. Also, in my (admittedly biased) perspective, Drupal provides vastly more interesting work opportunities than Wordpress ever could. That's why I chose to invest my time in learning it all those years ago.

> if a non-programmer can build a project on a self hosted platform then you're essentially asking for trouble with respect to security and future maintenance

Granted, but programmers are at least as likely to spawn security holes by being given a more powerful weapon. Relatively simple things like XSS and SQLi can be taken care of for a user who's not touching the code while they build their project. The strong params feature in Rails was a result of a gaping security hole in what I would consider to be the bellwether of good framework design. Mistakes are made.

So you still haven't named a better alternative ;)

In my opinion, I sort of agree - Drupal is the worst CMS, except for all the rest of them.

Re: Drupal: 15 years old

#30

Post by noir_lord »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
noir_lord wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better yet, avoid the php ecosystem completely and go for a more mature one, even the python and ruby frameworks have better long term prospects than most php based stuff. Agree with everything you said except this, PHP has recently undergone an renaissance in development, 7 is a huge step forwards (proper AST, the start of an optional type syste, 100% speedup, half the memory usage - I've actually seen these chang…

Agreed with everything you wrote here, I should have been more precise.

It's the internet, it largely doesn't matter how precise you are someone will find a way to correct you somehow ;).

That said your advice on using Symfony2 or something else over Drupal is extremely valid and I can say that as I used Drupal for a couple of years and ran into all the usual issues (worked fine for non-logged in, fell over with a few hundred logged in users), as a nice way to generate largely static content for end users it's just about acceptable but people seem determined to not use it for that, whether you can blame Drupal for that or the end users is an interesting question I guess.

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