Though I mostly agree, I sincerely hate this, and this isn't the first time I've seen it:
> but I can't imagine people who write such poor code being able to compete with a startup that actually uses technology competently
It's a pretty big jump from coding quality to inability to run a startup. You're assuming it's the same people, for one, and history has shown us that code quality has nothing to do with startup success. In this specific case, doesn't Wordpress contribute useful high-scalability software back to the community? I'm drawing a blank but I seem to remember something like that.
> It's a pretty big jump from coding quality to inability to run a startup.
Would you say that the general cluelessness of the people at MySpace was totally coincidental to the fact that they were probably the largest user of ColdFusion?
You mised my point: it was not that code quality causes startup fail but that poor technology choices are symptomatic or correlated with fail. For one, it impairs their ability to change the focus of their product.
Take, for example, the ability of their platform to support user-specified data models instead of simply posts, pages and comments. This was an ability that many users were requesting or implementing themselves (or working around) for many versions. It was only implemented in version 3.0, not even a year ago.
This is something that is trivial to support on any system designed around proper MVC principles. A well-designed competitor could have had this years ago.
From all this and more, I conclude that WP is vulnerable to disruption by a technologically superior product.
I sense a lot of idealism in you. MySpace was a Microsoft platform in the end and dropped Coldfusion, and there were far more variables related to its failure than its technology stack (contrary to what Scoble would like you to believe). I work for a company that uses Coldfusion extensively, and we succeed just fine, so your grand painting of Coldfusion as a bad decision is flawed with my sample size of 1.
> Take, for example, the ability of their platform to support user-specified data models instead of simply posts, pages and comments. This was an ability that many users were requesting or implementing themselves (or working around) for many versions. It was only implemented in version 3.0, not even a year ago.
Yeah, I'd rush to commit development to that too. It sounds pretty useless except for people who are molding Wordpress into something it wasn't envisioned to be.
Far be it from me to defend Wordpress's code quality, but they have two things going for them: (1) word-of-mouth and (2) install base. They got there using the code base they had, and it didn't get in their way. With a large install base comes responsibility. Rewriting your system and disrupting a significant plugin install base comes with a list of cons that grows and grows.
Proper code is a misnomer. There is no such thing as proper. Also, MVC doesn't apply to all use cases, and it certainly isn't a prerequisite to "proper" or "well-designed" as you imply (even when MVC is a perfect fit, there are alternative approaches). Wordpress went to market with what they had and they dominate the market.
> From all this and more, I conclude that WP is vulnerable to disruption by a technologically superior product.
Technologically superior products exist. Wordpress continues to dominate. Why is that, you think?
First, this argument is about the successfulness of the WordPress internal architecture. If you haven't looked at the internals WordPress, or written something against their PHP API, then you're arguing from ignorance.
> I sense a lot of idealism in you.
Please do your best to limit yourself to relevant statements.
> I work for a company that uses Coldfusion extensively, and we succeed just fine...
This is just intellectual dishonesty: you don't reveal at all whether or not the core of your business depends on Coldfusion, which would be important in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
You work for Linode, a company that provides VPS hosting. If you make a poor choice of technology on which to base your website, the core of your business is not impacted. Maybe some customers gripe about your dashboard, but your competitors will compete mainly on the superiority of their servers. If you work for a company like MySpace (which depends on its website entirely) and Facebook enters your market, you will not be able to find enough talented CF programmers to fend them off. Talented programmers would not ordinarily elect to use CF, for many reasons.
> It sounds pretty useless except for people who are molding Wordpress into something it wasn't envisioned to be.
Now you're simply being a contrarian. I don't think you even understand what this feature is or how it works. And yet again, I have to remind you of the point was: a feature that they wanted took a lot of time and effort to implement, when it could have been had trivially with a better architecture. In other words the technology decisions created inflexibility when implementing a product feature.
> Proper code is a misnomer. There is no such thing as proper.
First, your college professor might have an objection here.
Second, I said "proper MVC principles", as in, had they properly implemented MVC principles. I would be happy if they implemented any sort of architecture. This is one area where, if you had knowledge of the internals of WordPress, we could have a productive conversation, instead of simply negating what I said in the abstract.
> Also, MVC doesn't apply to all use cases, and it certainly isn't a prerequisite to "proper" or "well-designed" as you imply...
Not implied at all. Had you any knowledge of the internals of the WordPress architecture, it would again be useful to assert that knowledge so we could discuss whether or not it conforms to any notion of design. Unfortunately, you don't seem to want to discuss the actual point of the argument, preferring instead to deal with (ironically) ideal notions.
> Wordpress continues to dominate. Why is that, you think?
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
This kind of argument can be constructed for every company which currently leads its market, but may in the future be overtaken by a competitor. The relevant question is not "why does it dominate now" but "is it threatened by X".
> but I can't imagine people who write such poor code being able to compete with a startup that actually uses technology competently
It's a pretty big jump from coding quality to inability to run a startup. You're assuming it's the same people, for one, and history has shown us that code quality has nothing to do with startup success. In this specific case, doesn't Wordpress contribute useful high-scalability software back to the community? I'm drawing a blank but I seem to remember something like that.