[solardev]

I think that's a great point: that Drupal gave you a whole car, while today's JS gives you five incompatible wheels, thirteen colors of duct tape, and three fragile shells to put over them. Drupal had a lot of really strong (as in idiomatic and enforced) patterns that didn't let you take dirty shortcuts. As much as I hated it, it was solid engineering. (I'd consider it overengineered, but that's only cuz I'm coming from the opposite extreme... Frontpage and Dreamweaver).

That was probably also its downfall. It had a huge learning curve (same as Angular's downfall). And it didn't make for easy division of labor, and there was no quick and dirty way to do anything. The reason why there are so many Drupal consultants is because it takes so much manpower and brainspace to understand how Drupal is architected. With a headless CMS, the schema admin, the content editors, and frontend devs could each do their jobs independently without stepping on everyone else's toes. It's not as complete as a majestic monolith but each person's job was a lot easier, and way more isolated and safe.

Drupal tried to be everything for everyone, and in the end it was just too much for any one normal person. It's what happens when engineers design products for people who aren't like them.