#1) True. It does not use an MVC paradigm. That's not the way it was designed, and they're not able to make it MVC w/o breaking backward compatibility with the huge ecosystem of plugins and themes that currently exist.

#2) True, and I agree. The function naming could be improved. If you don't know what the function does, look it up in the codex or the source code. The documentation could improve, too, but one of the stated goals for their next development period is improved docs.

#3) Look at the docs. Yes, the_title() writes to the page. If you want to use the title in a variable, there is get_the_title(). There are generally other functions or parameters you can do if you want it to return the value rather than writing it.

#4) False. The comments template file is comments.php.

#5) True.

My company hates WordPress style theming. In fact, many of the design decisions we made on our product were to address this pain point. There are so many details to remember that the process of creating a theme becomes about Wordpress rather than about front-end web code.

We use Twig as a templating language and expose our entire data API so there isn't a massive set of functions to learn. Here is an example of how to list the latest posts:

  <ul>
    {% for post in hifi.get({'type':'post','orderBy':'-publishedAt'}) %}
    <li>{{ post.title }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>

This keeps the process of creating a theme mostly about HTML/CSS because it dramatically reduces the specific information that you need to know about the platform itself.

So let me get this straight. Some developer/guy spends 5 minutes trying to theme a WordPress website for himself and decides to write an article bitching about it instead of actually reading some documentation or the thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? The first commenter pretty much sums up how much this guy knows about WP themeing (hint: nothing).

This almost happens to me all the time but I know better. I spend 10 minutes with a new program, decide it's batshit crazy but instead of posting a lame article I have the wisdom and experience to stop and tell myself "I'm just a noob" and will probably embarrass myself.

I bet the developers have thought of rewriting it using OOP and an MVC pattern, but all current plugins and themes would have to be rewritten as well. It's not so bad, since you'd only need the top few dozen plugins and themes rewritten to get traction.

I'd be willing to help out if anyone here is brave enough to try a rewrite!

  <?php 
    $title = the_title( "<h1>", "</h1>", true ); 
    if(strlen($title > 80) {
      echo(substr($title, 0,80)."..."); 
    }
  ?> 

  <h1>{{$TITLE|truncate}}</h1>

  <?php 
    if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
      ...add posts to an array, then assign to template...

  $smarty->assign('POSTS',Post::getRecent(10));

  {{foreach from=$POSTS item=post name=posts}}
    <h2>{{$post->title|truncate}}</h2>
    <p>{{$post->content}}</p>
    {{$post->url->permalink}}
  {{/foreach}}

I don't want to hijack the intent of this submission too much, but I am really curious about a question burning on my mind. I can't help but notice the sheer number of WordPress mentions on HN and other sites lately, and while a paranoid part of me wonders if this is something of a marketing blitz, I want to try to get an unbiased opinion:

Is WordPress the way to go these days for blogging?

How does it compare to Blogger? What other reasonable options are there, and how do they compare?

Edit: And how does it compare to posterous?