Will Drupal 8 be the end of Drupal...?

Having seen this question in a couple of places on the Internet. After discussing with a few of the Drupal faithful and wondering the same thing myself, I decided to investigate further.

One of the key reasons that Drupal has been successful is because we always made big, forward-looking changes.

The biggest obstacle I had overcome was the definition of "end." In open source, "end" may not be clearly definable. A lot of technologies still linger or are privatized, while some have lost popularity. In privatization, the technology is scooped up into a private company and iterated on internally (see OpenX). When popularity or relevance becomes and issue, the pace of innovation naturally slows within the community; updates and patches slow to a trickle, and it eventually fades into obscurity (see any COBOL project). But both are still around and somewhere there is a highly experienced COBOL or OpenX consultant perpetuating them in a "technically induced coma." In some cases, projects lose their platform and quietly fade for lack of habitat, like Atari 6400 projects. For argument's sake, I'll accept either one of the first two as a reasonable definition of "end." Although not impossible, I doubt Drupal would lose its platform. I think the question for Drupal can be boiled down to these issues:

• Can Drupal's new object-oriented architecture entice the PHP community as a whole to invest and take the Drupal learning curve challenge?
• Can PHP7 meet the speed requirements of the future web service with its rising concurrency demands and ease of development and testing afforded by some of the newer technologies?
• Finally, will the Drupal faithful marine up, adapt and overcome? Will they bite the bullet to learn Object Oriented Php?

According to Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, Drupal's success is based on luck with "big, forward-looking changes." He also admits those significant changes have kept the version to version learning curve challenging. Which explains his new effort to include "sizeable advances in functionality every six months." as a means to facilitate rapid innovation with a more moderate learning curve. While they have streamlined the version control system for drupal.org, the pathway forward may remain clouded. To clear the waters and shed some light on the topic, I'm going to investigate each of these issues in my next several posts. While I'm hoping it may add some clarity to the topic, it might also provide a much-needed source of personal reflection.

I think the question for Drupal can be boiled down to these issues:

1. Can Drupal's new object-oriented architecture entice the PHP community as a whole to invest and take the Drupal learning curve challenge?

1. Can PHP7 meet the speed requirements of the future web service with its rising concurrency demands, ease of development and testing afforded by some of the newer technologies?
2. Finally, will the Drupal faithful marine up, adapt and overcome? Will they bite the bullet to learn Object Oriented Php?

According to Buytaert, Drupal's success is based on luck with "big, forward-looking changes." He also admits those significant changes have kept the version to version learning curve challenging. Which explains his new effort to include "sizeable advances in functionality every six months." as a means to facilitate rapid innovation with a more moderate learning curve.

While they have streamlined the version control system for drupal.org, the pathway forward may remain clouded. To clear the waters and shed some light on the topic, I'm going to investigate each of these issues in my next several posts. While I'm hoping it may add some clarity to the topic, it might also provide a much-needed source of personal reflection.

Next, I'll cover Drupal's place in the PHP community and the general perceptions it may or may not have.