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 think the tools will get dramatically better in the next year if the presentations at drupalcon DC 2009 were any indication.
Also, I think your overall approach to web development is way over on the cathedral side (which may be because of your focus on the needs of large projects, granted). Drupal's community ecosystem flourishes on building on other folks's work. The hook system, allowing modules to exchange events and pass control back and forth, performs the same function in code. It's a very bazaar model once you get out into the contrib repository. You will need to wade into the community to get the most out of drupal, IMHO.
"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 module
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:Drupal cannot currently be taken seriously (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 think the tools will get dramatically better in the next year if the presentations at drupalcon DC 2009 were any indication.
Also, I think your overall approach to web development is way over on the cathedral side (which may be because of your focus on the needs of large projects, granted). Drupal's community ecosystem flourishes on building on other folks's work. The hook system, allowing modules to exchange events and pass control back and forth, performs the same function in code. It's a very bazaar model once you get out into the contrib repository. You will need to wade into the community to get the most out of drupal, IMHO.
Re: (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 module