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Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

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Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#42
post #40

>>Ability to write PHP code using the beautiful Haml templating system; >>Ability to write CSS stylesheets using the awesome Sass syntax [...]; >>Ability to write Javascript logic in Coffeescript; Some may like that, but I want to write my PHP in PHP, and write my CSS in CSS, and write my JS in JS. I really never got why I would write one language in another language just to then use some tool to translate it (and if…

I agree with you, but I think the claim is that for those familiar with language variants like these, it is possible to be more productive. It is, of course, also more difficult to find collaborators familiar with non-standard variant languages.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#43
I was wordpress hater for two reasons - messy templates and messy plugins. This hate came from my "consulting" days when I often had to fix and add more features to existing wordpress websites.

Nice to see someone investing time into building rigid structure for templates... (Although it looks like a bit too much for me :)) But probably it worth learning Ruby, Haml, Sasl, coffee-script, etc)

Now if someone could come up with something very defined for plugins and make somehow all "wordpress programmers" use it for both templates and plugins - word could be better :)

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#44
I appreciate the work that must have gone into this, and it looks like it has been done well technically. However: How many people are this deep in the world of Ruby and yet also enjoy writing WordPress themes? I run a forum devoted to WordPress, and I can not imagine any of the experts (who post there) wanting to switch over to Haml or Coffeescript. Most people who use WordPress are either designers or programmers who are looking to put up a somewhat quick-n-dirty CMS.

If you have the skills and resources to install a Ruby environment and a bunch of gems, why not use Rails plus some CMS built with Rails?

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#45

All credibility was lost when I read Wordpress. #capitalPdangit

Wordpress is the worst blogging system out there, except for all of the others.

The comment you're replying to isn't making fun of WordPress. The WordPress community has this bizarre obsession with getting people to capitalize it the way they want them to.

http://www.wptavern.com/automatically-correcting-the-wordpre...

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#47

I appreciate the work that must have gone into this, and it looks like it has been done well technically. However: How many people are this deep in the world of Ruby and yet also enjoy writing WordPress themes? I run a forum devoted to WordPress, and I can not imagine any of the experts (who post there) wanting to switch over to Haml or Coffeescript. Most people who use WordPress are either designers or programmers w…

I can only present anecdotal evidence here but I do most of my freelance web dev work in Rails but turn to WordPress for web sites. I'm definitely more conversant in Ruby than PHP, but I think the ecosystem of the WordPress platform, plugins, and developer mindshare is a big deal for the projects' futures.

That said, I don't see myself using Wordless. Aside from my personal gripes with HAML, I have some concerns about breaking WordPress and PHP conventions. Will future developers be able to continue my work? Will plugins work as expected? How about page templates?

I did use SASS for a couple of themes and that worked out well enough, but I doubt I'll use it for future projects. Idiomatic code and tools are a bigger productivity boost both for myself and others.

EDIT: I can see a sweet spot for this in teams that work primarily with Ruby/Rails but want to leverage WordPress on a site they maintain in the long term.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#48
post #32
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails is a framework, while frameworks do cool things, developers in any language are not always out to build a piece of software that's like a swiss army knife like Wordpress. The rails communitys' exuberance to simplify and automate everything in sight hasn't quite reached wordpress yet. In the mean time there's gems, I guess.

I guess I was just thinking of rails very clear MVC pattern. Wordpress doesn't have this at all. Instead they have "the loop" which just ends up being a mess.

Yeah, Rails is one of many recent MVC patterned frameworks. It wasn't the first, and it won't be the last.

WP was created in a time where I think switches were used more.

Personally I find the MVC paradigm to apply to web apps easier, but there was a time when web apps maybe weren't so complex, and WP was around a long time ago.

Still, nothing provides a compelling ecosystem as Wordpress out there, so we can say the language, coding style seems to only matter so much in the end.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#49
post #40

>>Ability to write PHP code using the beautiful Haml templating system; >>Ability to write CSS stylesheets using the awesome Sass syntax [...]; >>Ability to write Javascript logic in Coffeescript; Some may like that, but I want to write my PHP in PHP, and write my CSS in CSS, and write my JS in JS. I really never got why I would write one language in another language just to then use some tool to translate it (and if…

HAML and SASS offer higher-level abstractions. They leak, but rarely enough that the cost of an occasional context switch (to debug generated code) is outweighed by normal productivity games. It's a good trade.

You'll never need to doctor the generated code, by the way. Anything you'd want to do in HTML or CSS can be done in HAML or SASS.

Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.

#50
post #11

This nearly made me sick. Yes, let's use RUBY to generate our PHP. That makes loads of sense. Then you said HAML, and I giggled. Then you said SASS, and I started cackling. Then you said CoffeeScript, and I nearly died of laughter. Keep your Rubyist junk out of my (unbeloved) PHP.

You know that you don't have to use it, right? Just want to make sure...
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