I have been developing for Drupal for 5 years, with a portfolio of many large scale projects. I am also the author of some popular Drupal modules.
With all that said, in my experience, Drupal offers zero TCO or ETA advantage over Django or Symfony on any medium to large project. A lot of the great things you may hear about Drupal are coming from either (a) Non-developers or (b) People who have staked their careers on Drupal.
A few reasons why Drupal cannot be taken seriously include...
I disagree about the importance of many of your points in the grand scheme of things (when considered against the benefits of a very capable core platform with literally thousands of plugins).
However, some of what you say is important, is widely acknowledged, and is being actively worked on. Deployment and change management for content and configurations in particular has been a weak point of drupal to this point, but there are now several major projects underway that attack this from different angles. I
"Deployment and change management for content and configurations in particular has been a weak point of drupal to this point"
I'd agree, and that in itself makes Drupal a real pain for any kind of real development shop (dev, test, prod servers which should be more or less in sync after a release.)
"You will need to wade into the community to get the most out of drupal, IMHO."
Another thing I dislike. I like community, don't get me wrong. I have been working with a few developers of some popular Drupal modules, and they have been very helpful. But to someone who is evaluating Drupal, why would they want to jump into a community if they aren't going to go with Drupal? Drupal needs some decent "How to get started..." documentation. By that, I mean not just how to install it. I mean a more condensed version of the book "Pro Drupal Development". I should be able to read up on how to implement a hook without having to read API documentation that makes too many assumptions on what I know about Drupal. You'll probably provide a link to counter my last statement, but I think you know what I mean here;)
Personally, anytime a CMS needs a few books dedicated to it, that means that it's grown too large. Don't you think it'd be better to do one or two (or three or four) things really well, and leave the rest alone? Honestly, comparing Drupal with other CMS packages, I think Drupal's strength isn't that it's great at anything. It's more of a matter that it does some things reasonably well and doesn't do anything remarkably horrid like roam the countryside at night eating babies like some other CMS do. That's not a good way to be the "best"; it's called being the tallest midget.
Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously (Score:5, Informative)
I have been developing for Drupal for 5 years, with a portfolio of many large scale projects. I am also the author of some popular Drupal modules.
With all that said, in my experience, Drupal offers zero TCO or ETA advantage over Django or Symfony on any medium to large project. A lot of the great things you may hear about Drupal are coming from either (a) Non-developers or (b) People who have staked their careers on Drupal.
A few reasons why Drupal cannot be taken seriously include...
1) Lack of unified model
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree about the importance of many of your points in the grand scheme of things (when considered against the benefits of a very capable core platform with literally thousands of plugins).
However, some of what you say is important, is widely acknowledged, and is being actively worked on. Deployment and change management for content and configurations in particular has been a weak point of drupal to this point, but there are now several major projects underway that attack this from different angles. I
Re:Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously (Score:2)
"Deployment and change management for content and configurations in particular has been a weak point of drupal to this point"
I'd agree, and that in itself makes Drupal a real pain for any kind of real development shop (dev, test, prod servers which should be more or less in sync after a release.)
"You will need to wade into the community to get the most out of drupal, IMHO."
Another thing I dislike. I like community, don't get me wrong. I have been working with a few developers of some popular Drupal modules, and they have been very helpful. But to someone who is evaluating Drupal, why would they want to jump into a community if they aren't going to go with Drupal? Drupal needs some decent "How to get started..." documentation. By that, I mean not just how to install it. I mean a more condensed version of the book "Pro Drupal Development". I should be able to read up on how to implement a hook without having to read API documentation that makes too many assumptions on what I know about Drupal. You'll probably provide a link to counter my last statement, but I think you know what I mean here ;)
Personally, anytime a CMS needs a few books dedicated to it, that means that it's grown too large. Don't you think it'd be better to do one or two (or three or four) things really well, and leave the rest alone? Honestly, comparing Drupal with other CMS packages, I think Drupal's strength isn't that it's great at anything. It's more of a matter that it does some things reasonably well and doesn't do anything remarkably horrid like roam the countryside at night eating babies like some other CMS do. That's not a good way to be the "best"; it's called being the tallest midget.