74% dread WordPress [↗]
So, 74% of people who took part in the 2016 Stack Overflow survey dread the thought of working with WordPress. Why is this? If I had to make some guesses:
- WordPress is nearly 13 years old. In terms of the web, where technology moves at a rapid pace, that’s pretty old. I would imagine that many younger developers would dread working with “old” stuff, I mean, it’s just not very “cool”.
- Despite the wording on the WordPress site, “WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app”, it’s still considered by many as just a tool for creating a blog. It’s actually much more than that, but many developers don’t seem to get past the blog thing. Hopefully, the new REST API will help to change that misconception.
- WordPress has a poor reputation for security. This was made blatantly obvious to me when I attended a penetration testing event and WordPress featured heavily as a target for testing exploits. I don’t know of any developers who enjoy getting hacked.
- WordPress is written in PHP. Or to rephrase, WordPress is not written in Python, JavaScript, Ruby, insert preferred language here.
- WordPress has a low barrier to entry and you don’t need any mad coding skillz to use it, hence many rockstar coders consider it a joke.
- There are thousands of themes and plugins available for WordPress, many of which are of questionable quality.
I’m sure I could go on, but I think you get the point; there are many reasons to dread working with WordPress. But, despite all of the above, I still really enjoy hacking on it.