[blunte]

> should be a solved problem by now, and not require every developer to ask themselves these questions again and again

This applies to so very much of web developement. We have spent so much collective time building web apps, and some have also put a lot of time into building libraries and frameworks, that with all the brainpower and effort, things should be easier now than they are.

I believe this is because we've had too much freedom. Not suggesting we should have stuck with C or Java, but it seems that many people who are motivated and intelligent have decided to build their own better mousetrap. So now we have 1,000 mousetraps. Or maybe 10,000. If we could somehow redirect that effort into 3-4 primary options, I think we'd be overall better off.

Take Wordpress for example. You can do just about anything with Wordpress and some custom plugins. It's a miserable experience mostly, but it's possible. Imagine if some of the smartest people behind some of the best frameworks and libs collectively worked on one new system (plugin-based). As long as there were a good plugin interface, the users (devs) could then use whatever language they prefer to provide business logic and customization.

[qw]

One of the benefits of Wordpress is that it runs on PHP. It's very easy to find a cheap web host and just copy the files over. Many web hosts even have a simple button that sets it up for you.

A viable alternative would need to be just as simple, and currently that implies it should probably be implemented in PHP, which will exclude developers who want experience with "blog-friendly" languages.

[blunte]

PHP, _like Javascript_, can be great when used with some extra care. I have no beef with PHP (although omg do they waste space with curly braces on their own lines and vast amounts of indentation!)

A good foundation can be in any language, such as PHP. But it needs to have a modern, better architecture with a more consistent base library/API for the plugin writers to take advantage of. WP is like 1.0 of this. We've learned so much in the last 10-15 years; it would be nice to have a completely rethought foundation.

But for the plugins, I think there should be a standard interface layer (based on probably http, tcp, pipes, files, even memory stores for communication). Then plugins could be written in any language, hosted locally or remotely, and sandboxed.