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Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

mikecr.it

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Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#41

Post by w4y2 »

jackbravo wrote: post #36
tedsuo wrote: post #25

I would add this to the complaints: - NOT AMENABLE TO SOURCE CONTROL Half the code lives in the database, configuration is all mixed up with content, and there's no reliable programmatic way to extract it. It makes doing deployment a nightmare. And the worst part? Drupal developers by and large have such a narrow range of experience that they don't even know what they are missing. They have no idea what good coding s…

This is why http://drupal.org/project/features module was born. To allow you to export your functionality to code and have it under version control. Features and things like http://drupal.org/project/drush_make is what makes a lot of the drupal distributions ( http://drupal.org/project/distributions ) that keep popping up because sourced controlled, feature driven development is now possible in drupal. Also the testi…

Features is good as a concept, but in implementation it fails considerably. Here are a few issues:

- How to deprecate a feature (I created http://drupal.org/node/1400346 to attempt to solve this, but admitedly, it's a very dangerous module) - Ever created a feature with tons of things in it? Hello, 5 minute load times for admin pages! - How do you merge two features together? How do you commit just one feature and not another (say, one you're still working on?)

The CMI initiative will hopefully take care of a lot of the messiness and bugs in Features.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#42

Post by rybosome »

Developing a large web application in Drupal from October 2011 to May 2012 was, by far, the most stressful period of my professional life. The most difficult part is that the vast majority of learning materials for Drupal are aimed at non-developers. So much literature is dedicated to impressing people who otherwise couldn't create a website with things like, "LOOK! You can implement access control, put a smiley face next to all comments, AND have a YouTube video feed!" that finding documentation on actual code is extremely challenging.

Another aspect of the project that was difficult was that the client had very specific needs. In almost every piece of functionality they requested, there was some wrinkle that made using an off-the-shelf module impossible. This meant having to code against the behemoth Drupal API. After about 3 months of work, I created an OO-wrapper module around Nodes called Doodal (https://github.com/rybosome/doodal) that makes it possible to code in an MVC-like way. This made the rest of the project somewhat easier, minus the parts that involved interfacing with native Drupal. Drupal was created at a time when PHP didn't have object oriented features. Their solution to the problem of needing OO-like behavior but not having it was to emulate it, which is an abstraction that quickly falls apart. For instance, the shortest line of PHP you could possibly write to simply print out an optional "first name" value from a node representing a person is...

array_key_exists('und', $person->first_name) ? $person->first_name['und'][0]['safe_value'] : '';

While I was wrapping up this project, a friend of mine pointed me to an opening his company had for a Drupal dev, paying about 1.8x what I was making at the time. I declined without even thinking about it, and have not regretted it for a second.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#43

Post by w4y2 »

dasil003 wrote: post #31
lkrubner wrote: post #6

I am puzzled by this: "Good Drupal developers are making a lot of money right now, much more than I'm seeing for Django or Rails or Node devs in general." I am curious where this is? This is not true in New York City, where I am. Developers who are good with a given PHP framework (Drupal, Symfony, etc) will make something like $60 to $70 an hour. The top Rails devs will make at least the same amount, and usually a li…

This doesn't make sense to me either, though I haven't touched Drupal for at least 6 years. In my experience, Drupal is ideal for cheap clients who want a zillion features but don't have the budget. You can deliver more functionality in Drupal than anything else, that is absolutely true. For high-end clients who are willing to pay for impeccable UX and solid problem-solving, I can rarely recommend Drupal because it s…

It appears you don't really understand the Drupal theming layer.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#44

Post by rybosome »

jtreminio wrote: post #30
exratione wrote: post #12

If you're using Drupal the way the author describes here - building in the interface rather than writing code - then yes, you're pretty much doomed. You're producing a very fragile thing that is very hard to maintain and adjust later on, and heaven help you if you actually want to do something in a different way than the modules you're working with allow out of the box. Drupal development is very divided between (a)…

What would you recommend an experienced developer coming into Drupal do to land in group A?

I had a lot of difficulty finding good learning resources for developers. Most are aimed at non-programmers. I had quite a few questions answered on http://drupal.stackexchange.com/, which is a good starting point.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#45

Post by ryanwaggoner »

lkrubner wrote: post #6

I am puzzled by this: "Good Drupal developers are making a lot of money right now, much more than I'm seeing for Django or Rails or Node devs in general." I am curious where this is? This is not true in New York City, where I am. Developers who are good with a given PHP framework (Drupal, Symfony, etc) will make something like $60 to $70 an hour. The top Rails devs will make at least the same amount, and usually a li…

This is not true in New York City, where I am. Developers who are good with a given PHP framework (Drupal, Symfony, etc) will make something like $60 to $70 an hour. The top Rails devs will make at least the same amount, and usually a little more than that.

Sounds like more developers who need to dramatically raise their rates. I'm in NYC and I charge more than double that for iOS development. I sit next to a good freelance PHP guy charging $85-95 / hr who is slammed with work, ironically mostly for Wordpress. He should be charging more, but he's getting there :)

And the top Rails devs in NYC are definitely charging way more than that; I know guys doing $150 / hr and up.

http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#46

Post by klearvue »

lkrubner wrote: post #37
vaporstun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal developer with 4+ years of working with it under my belt. The nitty gritty is that we use it in an environment where we basically have 2 teams. One that builds custom code/modules that can be installed and enabled in Drupal to add additional functionality and another that actually deploys sites. The team that deploys sites is savvy, but are not hardcore developers. The thing I've come to over all these years i…

At the risk of giving offense, I have to say some of your comments seem to be written in ignorance of Rails. This whole bit is surprising to me: "Built in Rails (Total additional developer time to add these features: 400 hours) (1) Damn, back to the drawing board, we need 100 more hours of dev time to develop a custom component ... (2) Damn, back to the drawing board, we need 250 more hours of dev time to build a cal…

"To be productive at Rails, you have to know what gems are out there. You need to keep up with the gems, because they really are central to the productivity boost you can get from Rails. There is a gem for almost any bit of functionality you need, you only have to know which gems are good. If you find yourself writing large amounts of custom code in Rails, then either you are truly tackling a novel problem that no one has ever dealt with before, or you are simply unaware of the gem that you should be using."

This made me smile:

:%s/Rails/Drupal/g

:%s/gem/module/g

"To be productive at Drupal, you have to know what modules are out there. You need to keep up with the modules, because they really are central to the productivity boost you can get from Drupal. There is a module for almost any bit of functionality you need, you only have to know which modules are good. If you find yourself writing large amounts of custom code in Drupal, then either you are truly tackling a novel problem that no one has ever dealt with before, or you are simply unaware of the module that you should be using."

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#47

Post by chx »

rybosome wrote: post #42

Developing a large web application in Drupal from October 2011 to May 2012 was, by far, the most stressful period of my professional life. The most difficult part is that the vast majority of learning materials for Drupal are aimed at non-developers. So much literature is dedicated to impressing people who otherwise couldn't create a website with things like, "LOOK! You can implement access control, put a smiley face…

First, it's LANGUAGE_NONE not 'und'. Second, while I could go on how you should use field_get_items instead, it's very very likely you are missing some concepts here an you want a formatter, a whole display mode etc. You very rarely need that level of plumbing.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#48

Post by vaporstun »

lkrubner wrote: post #37
vaporstun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal developer with 4+ years of working with it under my belt. The nitty gritty is that we use it in an environment where we basically have 2 teams. One that builds custom code/modules that can be installed and enabled in Drupal to add additional functionality and another that actually deploys sites. The team that deploys sites is savvy, but are not hardcore developers. The thing I've come to over all these years i…

At the risk of giving offense, I have to say some of your comments seem to be written in ignorance of Rails. This whole bit is surprising to me: "Built in Rails (Total additional developer time to add these features: 400 hours) (1) Damn, back to the drawing board, we need 100 more hours of dev time to develop a custom component ... (2) Damn, back to the drawing board, we need 250 more hours of dev time to build a cal…

> Your comments comparing Rails and Drupal surprises me. I feel like you are writing without realizing how Rails development is done.

First, no offense taken.

Next, I do have a fair amount of experience developing in Rails (it's my go-to hobby framework and I MUCH prefer developing in it to Drupal as I thought I imparted in my original comment) and yes, there are gems that get you most of the way there with some of the tasks I described, but our site builders (read: non-developers) are unfamiliar with the command line, could not generally install gems without intervention from developers and, if necessary, could not extend them without developer intervention. That is what I'm trying to describe.

With Drupal, people who interact only with a web browser can install rich components from a library of modules developed by others with integration with the Content Types (basically the equivalent of Rails Models in Drupal) with zero development.

Looking back at my original comment, arguably my time estimates for development were exaggerated to some extent and could be shortened with the use of gems, but the fact remains there is, at current, no way for users, through only a web browser, to enable that kind of rich functionality in Rails. That was the point I was trying to get across.

You don't have to write much code but you still have to write code. This makes it a non-starter for a particular class of user.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#49

Post by vaporstun »

w4y2 wrote: post #41
jackbravo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why http://drupal.org/project/features module was born. To allow you to export your functionality to code and have it under version control. Features and things like http://drupal.org/project/drush_make is what makes a lot of the drupal distributions ( http://drupal.org/project/distributions ) that keep popping up because sourced controlled, feature driven development is now possible in drupal. Also the testi…

Features is good as a concept, but in implementation it fails considerably. Here are a few issues: - How to deprecate a feature (I created http://drupal.org/node/1400346 to attempt to solve this, but admitedly, it's a very dangerous module) - Ever created a feature with tons of things in it? Hello, 5 minute load times for admin pages! - How do you merge two features together? How do you commit just one feature and no…

The other downside of Features in Drupal is that if we export something as a Feature (say a View) and then our site builders tweak and change that View for our clients and then we update some core element of that View and re-export the Feature, that re-export will overwrite any custom changes that were made to that View, thereby trashing any of the custom changes. This is a real problem with Features to which I'm surprised there has not yet been a good solution.

Re: Drupal's Golden Handcuffs

#50

Post by hippich »

lkrubner wrote: post #6

I am puzzled by this: "Good Drupal developers are making a lot of money right now, much more than I'm seeing for Django or Rails or Node devs in general." I am curious where this is? This is not true in New York City, where I am. Developers who are good with a given PHP framework (Drupal, Symfony, etc) will make something like $60 to $70 an hour. The top Rails devs will make at least the same amount, and usually a li…

I am charging $100/hr. Although I am not dealing with simple stuff like creating a theme or "build social network for XYZ from scratch using Drupal." I either fix complicated bugs and provide a guidance of best way to build site. My clients often pretty knowledgeable technology-wise, but I have insight into how Drupal work inside and therefore can provide great advice on how to do something or rather not do it at all.

As Drupal matures and become even more complex beast I expect my rate become even higher in next 1-3 years.

So, yes - Drupal is paid well now, but no - not basic clicking around and basic theming.

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