Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development
Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.
Oftentimes, one of the great things you hear about WordPress is its low barrier to entry.
Depending on who you ask, this may be seen as a good thing or this may be seen as a bad thing. Whatever the perspective, I think there are inherent problems with treating any language and/or platform that way.
At best, experienced developers can pick it up quickly. At worst, beginners feel as if they’re lacking because this “low barrier” doesn’t actually feel so low.
One of the things that I really enjoy whether or not I’m out for a walk, a run, or a drive, is listen to a number of different podcasts. And I don’t think I’m an exception.
As with any topic that we all like, there are times in which I find myself wanting a WordPress podcast. To be clear, this isn’t to say there aren’t any – WP Tavern, DradCast, and Apply Filters turn out good stuff – and the now-defunct WP Candy Podcast used to be a fun listen, but I do think there’s a gap in WordPress-related podcasts.
At least in so far as the style of the podcast is concerned.
From a consumer perspective, WordPress is as attractive as it is because of the number of plugins that exist for it. From a developer perspective, WordPress is as attractive as it is because of how easy it is to extend the core application through the APIs.
They’re a hot topic, too – anyone (including me and probably you, as well) who’s worked with WordPress in any capacity has their opinions on some plugins, on certain plugins, on all plugins, on the plugin directory, and so on.
But one thing that we don’t talk about very much – at least right now – is the idea of extensions. But why? They’re something that are becoming more common with various plugins and with various themes.
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For those who are just getting started in WordPress development, one of the more challenging aspects of working with some of the extended APIs is that of WordPress taxonomies.
Perhaps it’s because the term is one that’s not often used, perhaps it’s because it’s something that’s a little difficult to understand; however, whatever the case, I’m aiming to try to simplify the topic in my latest series on Tuts+.
This weekend, WordPress Lead Developer Andrew Nacin shared a link to a short, but interesting article from the CEO of Slack.
Though the article, in its entirety, is worth a read, one of the biggest points made in the article (and in the associated tweet) is:
I feel that what we have right now is just a giant piece of shit. Like, it’s just terrible and we should be humiliated that we offer this to the public. Not everyone finds that motivational, though.
For anyone who has worked in software for long enough to release something to be public (be it 100 users or 100,000 users), this statement is kinda validating isn’t it?
That is, for the majority of the programmers that I know (including myself) both online and offline, I rarely hear any of them talk about how proud they are of the entire architecture of their application. Sure, some talk about parts they are proud of, but more often than not, it’s more about the general problems they have with the current state of the entire system.
The interesting bit is that for those who care about what we’re doing, we try to read books, blogs, articles and discuss topics that go into building quality software. And software, in this sense, isn’t limited to a desktop application – this can be a mobile app, a web application, a web site, a WordPress theme, or even a small JavaScript application that runs in the context of a larger site.
Regardless, it’s easier to talk about how things should be rather than writing things how they should be. Good thing we have that whole refactoring bit, right?
But that’s beside the point of what I’m actually getting at. Instead, the point I’m trying to make is that I think open source software often times is far more harshly criticized than its closed source counterpart.
And why shouldn’t it be?
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