"Why I Hate Drupal." It's not the presentation you'd expect from one of the key persons behind Drupal's growth, but that's what an attentive audience heard at DrupalCon DC earlier this year. Now, if you guess that there's a tongue-in-cheek component behind that title, you'd be right; "Why I Hate Drupal" was a chance for a group of developer to point at some Drupal bugs, shortcoming, and frustrations, commiserating over a Keynote document instead of a beer. But it's not all laughs; the speaker and the audience have some real steam to release.
The presentation shouldn't turn anyone off of Drupal and its amazing strengths. What it offers is a frank reality check against too much upbeat hype, and some welcome pointers to hurdles that would-be Drupal masters will have to overcome. And good honest criticism is always necessary to make further improvements.
I jotted down a few notes and quotes while listening to the presentation video. Much of the content was focused on trials facing developers, but even the Drupal beginner will recognize a few sore spots.For your amusement, below is the text which I earlier posted on the Drupal Japan group (in a discussion of how likely Drupal is to "break out" in that market).
Speaker: James Walker. Full-time Drupal dev & contributor since 2003. Co-founder of bryght in 2004 (hosted Drupal service, to make Drupal easy). Later went to Lullabot.
At same time he worked on Drupal, WordPress launched. Wildly more popular than Drupal.
Drupal making progress too. But still ranks low on Google Trends vs Joomla and WordPress.
Post-installation screen and instructions: Confusing for new users. Links to Modules screen... list is scary for new users. "Save" button at bottom isn't visible. Enabling modules doesn't show new user any changes. Enabling "Blog" doesn't show anything changed. Changing theme still leaves a strange-looking site. Logo is "scary alien". Drupal has "world's worst forum software."
Users try to create content.... Immediate question: "How do I upload pictures???" Need to start learning modules. But 4400 modules!
Drupal users don't need to be programmers... but Views interface is almost as difficult as programming?
Updating difficult. Takes long time for modules to become ready. Problems often happen during upgrade.
"Is Drupal really a CMS? Is it really a product we can package and sell? I tried..."
Many disappointments at developer level:
- Often-used label "Content Management Framework" is not good description of Drupal.
- Disagrees with claims of "object oriented" system.
- Dislikes some uses of arrays in code, ignoring more standard practices.
- Dislikes some methods like drupal_alter.
- "Not Invented Here" thinking is too strong. Drupal avoids external libraries, even when they could make things easier. PHP has functions to parse .info files, but Drupal uses own regular expression. (Other similar examples given.)
- Learning curve has ups and downs for developers, as learners run into "The Drupal Way" of doing things.
- Taxonomy system fundamentally broken in some way? (No detail.)
- For new contributors, contribution system relies too much on "who you know". Not transparent. Not a meritocracy. People who work the most on Drupal often get to contribute more code than those who contribute the best work.
Drupal should be a movement ("we stink at being a product..."), and is gaining people – but to be a movement, should address everybody. But is Drupal trying to address everybody, and really addressing nobody? "Jack of all trades, master of none."
That wraps up my notes. If you can, take a listen to the presentation; it's worthwhile for a serious Drupaler. Anything in there provoke a reaction with you?
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