I’m attending an awesome conference this week and I’ve been seeing a trend that I want to address.
On more than one occasion I’ve noticed people bad-mouthing a particular technology they’ve deemed as being inferior. Specifically I’m addressing the number of speakers and panelists bad-mouthing WordPress. On more than one occasion WordPress has been called (and I’m paraphrasing) crap and useless.
As a full-time mobile developer I do not develop on the PHP side of WordPress. I barely know how to create a plugin even after working four years at Automattic. I personally do not have a drive to learn WP dev beyond what I need to accomplish my job. Just because I don’t use WP directly and only the APIs doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for it and the entire community of developers and volunteers behind it.
Marginalizing an entire development community, especially at a polyglot tech conference, is a shitty move. Given that I work for Automattic and WordPress pays the bills it really hurts hearing someone call what you’re working on useless and irrelevant. I guess 28% of the web on WordPress isn’t really great (/sarcasm).
The reality is you’re not perfect. Your code is crap, just like mine, and everything we did in the past is never as good as what we’re working on now. We live in an ecosystem of technologies – learn to love everything that is tech. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the foundation of what’s considered legacy. Your perspective is ultimately skewed to what your personal experiences have been – understanding others have valid experiences as well makes our world more diverse and inclusive.
Leif Singer
> learn to love everything that is tech
Or just learn to be more indifferent about the tech and focus on the impact it is having, the communities are having, you are having.
Jeremy Ron King
It really is poor form and quite common in our industry. I’ve even done it myself (repeatedly), but that doesn’t make it right. As I continue to mature, I’m learning that the technology/language/platform matters less everyday, as long as it’s secure, functional, and usable.
CJ Andrew
This is such a timely blog post.
Thank you to addressing this trend head-on.
I’ve read recent blog & twitter posts that attack WordPress and whatever it stands for. I find this *really* hurtful.
Not so much because of the technology; its more the fact that these types of unfounded attacks are really directed at the *people* who use, support, work with, and volunteer to move WordPress forward.
Some narrow-minded folk in the “tech bubble” always talk about “diversity” (emptily), yet in the next breath they attack WordPress as being immature and not being a proper application, not scalable, crap, etc.
What nonsense!!
Having come to WordPress from other frameworks, I’ve found that the flexibility, and potential of the platform far outweigh any issues or shortcomings of its codebase. By a mile.
WordPress development is definitely web development. Right and proper.
Moreover, WordPress is far more adoptable by new web developers. It also provides a motivation to up-skill.
As soon as these “newbies”(/sarcasm) adopt WordPress, they get curious and start looking deeper, eventually making a commitment to advance themselves as developers and human beings: whatever that may mean for them.
And who benefits from this?
*Mainstream tech!*
Turing, the father of programming once said we need more people with more discipline coming into the field. That statement is more true now than ever.
But exclusive, elitist “tech people” simply don’t get it.
If there are unhappy with WordPress, why not contribute and improve it?
My concern here is that such attacks on WordPress often go deeper than just the technology!