Coen Jacobs, who works as a backend developer, published a short video explaining why he doesn’t work with WordPress full-time anymore. It’s not that he doesn’t like the project but rather, he’s gained a fresh perspective since stepping outside of the WordPress bubble.
WordPress used to be the holy grail for me, I made everything with WordPress, even things that weren’t really suitable to be built on WordPress. I was an absolute fanboy who used WordPress for everything.
WordPress isn’t going away anytime soon but it’s a risky move to place all your eggs in one basket.
Instead of using WordPress for everything, he’s now using the best framework or tool for the job. I think this is a key lesson that a lot of WordPress developers need to be reminded of from time to time. WordPress is capable of handling a lot of different types of websites but it’s not suitable for every project. Use the right tool for the job.
I definitely recommend every WordPress developer step out and learn other technologies. Get familiar with other programming languages, cloud services such as AWS, etc. It will make you a better WordPress developer and it’s good to get outside of the “echo chamber” that is the WordPress community.
That being said, WordPress isn’t the end all be all. But it is definitely good for a wide variety of things. But I wouldn’t necessarily say build every type of application on top of it.
From a product development standpoint the biggest strengths is it’s ecosystem and the size of it’s user base. Even if your product is a SaaS service that is platform agnostic, providing a WordPress plugin and marketing to the WordPress community gives you a very large targeted audience to go after. Much easier than just targeting everyone.
But definitely get out of the WordPress bubble on a regular basis. You’ll be a better developer by doing so. The WordPress way of doing something is most definitely NOT always the only way OR the right way to do something.