So Why DOES Drupal Suck?

So Why DOES Drupal Suck? March 6, 2009

Posted by Brandon Savage in Drupal, Usability

When I headed to DrupalCon this week, I thought it would be strange to attend a talk called "Why Drupal Sucks", but that's exactly the title of James Walker's talk this morning about Drupal and all that's wrong with it.

Walker starts off by talking about some of the great things about Drupal. But in a comedic style, he targets some of the most often complaints regarding the open source platform. He focuses on usability, the fact that Drupal tries to be all things to all people, and that it's nearly impossible for a newbie to effectively involve themselves in the community with ease.

A lot of what he takes issue with is well known. Core has 30 modules, many of which are difficult to use or impossible to configure. Every Drupal developer knows the phrase "there's a module for that!" and they use it religiously. The problem is that average, ordinary folks don't want to find the module for that – they just want it to work.

He highlights a lot of great things about Drupal as well – the community, the level of involvement, the fact that there are 1,400 people at Drupalcon. As someone relatively new to Drupal, but a seasoned PHP developer, this was a great overview.

Walker ends his talk by saying "Drupal sucks at being a product so we should become a movement." I don't entirely support his argument but I appreciate the sentiment. In all, Walker provides some great things for the community to consider, and makes some important points about the direction Drupal is going.

4 comment(s)

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-5 Trader colombia - March 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

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+1 Dave Keays - March 6th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

Connecting with the user is necessary in all forms of programming and one that programmers stereotypically suck at.

The “there’s a module for that!” phrase is overused but only means “yes, it has already be done and I can implement it with little effort.”

It would be nice if programmers learned to communicate better and their groups weren’t such an elitist group that is so difficult to enter. But these issues are not unique to Drupal.

My understanding is that the usability issues have greatly been alleviated with Drupal7 just as the installation issues of yesteryear were alleviated with Drupal5 and 6.

That said, these things do need to be addressed for penetration beyond the niche market Drupal already has conquered.
Josh McCormack - March 8th, 2009 at 11:17 pm

I blogged on this at http://interactiveqa.com/conte.....-usability and linked back to this article.

I think this is a great topic that should be discussed and clarified. It’s a lot more complex than just whether Drupal is easy to use or not.

I’m really thankful for the work people are putting in to make Drupal a solid system, and of James Walker for getting everyone talking.
Drew Pearl - March 13th, 2009 at 8:25 pm

Drupal is great! But it sucks!

I glad I’m not alone in the sentiment of that seemingly contradictory statement.

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