[jacques_chester]

Wordpress gets a lot of crap for being poorly written because it is poorly written. There's no great mystery here.

Yes, they deal with lots of different configurations. This is not unique in the history of software development. It's called "portability" and many organisations seem to be able to achieve it without compromising quality.

My searing, eye-boiling hatred for Wordpress comes from administering it for what is now nearly a decade. Every time I dive into the code I am frequently repulsed by it.

The total absence of tests is my favourite "feature". I've seen multiple bugs closed with WORKSFORME that I was directly grappling with.

[robryan]

You are right it is far from perfect, it is pragmatic and providing a great amount of value for people/ businesses. It is surprising to me that we haven't seen a big challenger trying to do it right from a back end perspective.

[jacques_chester]

Because users don't care about the backend. They care about the shiny features, look-and-feel and the availability of plugins and themes.

Wordpress delivers these in spades.

[jmathai]

You probably have more experience with Wordpress than I do so I won't try to argue with that :).