Should I Learn Drupal or PHP?
Should I learn Drupal or PHP?
Drupal is a CMS or Content Management System. You can create a CMS in PHP, but you can do far more with PHP than run a blog.
Drupal has a reputation for being easy to use.
Drupal is content management systems for dummies. You can set up a blog like WordPress and manage an intranet off it without knowing any programming.
What is your opinion of PHP?
PHP isn’t hard to learn as a programming language. It isn’t as widely used or supported as say Lisp or JavaScript.
Lisp has good documentation and training because there are people who’ve used it longer than we’ve been alive.
Drupal can be hard to learn because it changes so much. They radically alter it to include new functionality with each release.
They also cause a lot of headaches because they aren’t backward compatible.
They’re so busy looking forward they don’t care about who they leave behind. However, it does create a strong market for those developers who can update someone’s Drupal customizations.
I’ve heard that a lot of plugins for Drupal are written in PHP.
PHP, Python and other stuff. But developing code for Drupal is a pain because it has its own processes and no simple interfaces; you have to hook your stuff into its processes despite the inefficiencies and hassles.
Which one do you think I should learn – Drupal or PHP?
You could, of course, learn both. Learn how to manage a content management system used by major newspapers and code anything else anyone may need.
Drupal’s user interface is set up so you don’t need a programming background to manage it.
Whereas you have to be an expert programmer in every sense of the word to customize it. Hence the need for PHP, Python and perhaps a few other programming languages in your quiver.
Content management systems come and go as often as languages; which should I learn?
Learn PHP. Drupal is so busy being on the leading edge that they forget the need to build a solid foundation, and a tool that shaky is easily swept away by the competition.
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