I spend 90% of my time in 'real' languages like Java, C#, and Python building 'real' web apps/services and I still go to Wordpress if I need basic CMS functionality. It's incredibly easy to build a theme or plugin for and the deployment pipeline is pretty darn simple. Granted, if you were average Joe user and went installing plugins and themes from the darkest corners of the 'net your site would be absolutely hosed, but keeping it to the basics I've had very little performance issues and have been able to have a couple of sites withstand some major traffic spikes.
Maybe it's because I just haven't forced myself to get good and fast w/ Django, but when I need a CMS and the project is almost entirely about how it looks or some functionality that is solved by a well regarded plugin I just head straight for WP.
That being said, I 100% agree that the codebase is horrific when you're used to writing modern PHP (even worse when you're used to other languages, period) but it is such a known quantity it's hard to move away from it unless it can be solved by using something like Squarespace, etc.
> It's incredibly easy to build a theme or plugin for and the deployment pipeline is pretty darn simple
I disagree, I found writing custom auth and theme to be nightmarish compared to other frameworks and CMSs because the codebase is so poorly documented and illogically structured. It probably took us three times as long as it should have done to "complete" the project. Having subsequently played with some other CMSs/frameworks like October (based on Laravel) and Django, wordpress looks somewhat inexcusably bad.
Maybe it's because I just haven't forced myself to get good and fast w/ Django, but when I need a CMS and the project is almost entirely about how it looks or some functionality that is solved by a well regarded plugin I just head straight for WP.
That being said, I 100% agree that the codebase is horrific when you're used to writing modern PHP (even worse when you're used to other languages, period) but it is such a known quantity it's hard to move away from it unless it can be solved by using something like Squarespace, etc.