Page 1 of 1

Is Drupal really very very powerful ?

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:44 pm
by jankidudel
Is it worth to invest big time amounts to learn it ?

Re: Is Drupal very very powerful ?

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:47 pm
by DaveTheAve
jankidudel wrote:True ?
It's not God.... No.

Re: Is Drupal really very very powerful ?

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 2:34 pm
by califdon
That's a good way of phrasing it, Dave. :)

If you are going to work with a team of PHP programmers who are using a framework like Drupal, then of course you need to learn it. If you are an active web developer seeking complex web design jobs, it would be good to have one or more of these frameworks in your bag of tools. If you are a hobbyist who designs a few personal websites, I'd agree with Dave.

These frameworks can make a team effort more efficient, everybody using the same library and syntax, making it easy for a different developer to step in with the least amount of studying the code. They can make it easier to do some kinds of tasks by using functions and objects that do a lot of the detailed work. But at the end of the day, you can do anything that a framework can do, with just plain PHP code. And there are so many different frameworks that you will never learn all of them, so I think that learning just one of them is limiting.

That's my opinion.

Re: Is Drupal really very very powerful ?

Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 7:41 pm
by alex.barylski
Your question cannot be answered without some bias. Yes Drupal is very powerful and flexible, but it does come at a cost, mostly time invested in learning the ways Drupal works. The hardest part for most advanced developers, is they are typically accustomed to developing software their way - typically following some interpretation of MVC. Drupal is not MVC friendly so it turns off a lot of more experienced developers who opt to build from a more low level framework (CodeIgnitor, Zend, CakepHP, Symphony, etc).

If you have clients who are very tight on budget, Drupal can be a life saver/money maker. That being said, if you have used a one of the above frameworks for several projects, you likely have a custom library for common functionality like authentication, password reset, forums, etc.

Drupal will take a while to use, will expedite a lot of the boring CRUD stuff for you and let you focus on business logic and code a client is paying you for however they way it allows you to do that may not be to your liking in which case Drupal ain't for you.

Cheers,
Alex