I keep hearing programmers criticize WordPress all the time. They say things like “it’s not real programming,” “anyone can use it,” or “the code is garbage.” Sure, WordPress has its problems and can be annoying to work with sometimes. But there’s clearly value in it too.
If WordPress is truly as terrible as people claim, how come it runs more than 40% of all websites? If it’s supposedly so simple that anyone can use it, why do so many people struggle to create decent sites with it? The truth is, if you really know what you’re doing with WordPress, you can earn good money without burning yourself out compared to building everything from scratch every single time.
I write code for other projects too, but I find myself picking WordPress over custom solutions quite often. It gets things done quickly, grows with your needs, and clients see results much faster. Maybe before dismissing it completely, people should actually learn how to use it properly. What do other WordPress developers think about this?
Most WordPress hate comes from developers who don’t get what it is. They want it to act like a traditional framework, but it’s a CMS with its own way of doing things. Learn how WordPress thinks - hooks, filters, the loop - and you can build pretty sophisticated stuff. Sure, speed to market is great, but the real win is maintenance and handoffs. When I build custom solutions, I’m stuck being the bottleneck for every change. With WordPress, clients update their own content, other devs can jump right in, and there’s a massive ecosystem of plugins and themes. No need to reinvent the wheel. Yeah, there’s some questionable legacy stuff in core - but show me a long-running codebase that doesn’t have that. The real question: does it let you build what clients need efficiently and keep it maintainable? For most business sites, WordPress nails it.
Been working with WordPress professionally for 8+ years. Most criticism comes from devs who’ve never built anything real with it. Sure, the codebase has legacy baggage - but what mature platform doesn’t after this long? What matters is whether it delivers value to clients and users. It does.
Critics usually focus on core WordPress and miss the bigger ecosystem. Modern WP development means custom post types, ACF, proper theme architecture, sometimes headless setups. That’s not beginner stuff. Low barrier to entry? Maybe. But mastering WordPress takes real technical chops. I’ve watched plenty of skilled developers in other languages struggle hard with complex WP projects.
the whole “wordpress is bad” thing is just overblown. most old platforms have some messy code, just look at fb’s early php! what matters is that wp actually solves probs for users, not of we’re winning a coding beauty contest or something.