[development] Extend database abstraction layer, to include table creation.

[Dries Buytaert]

On 13 May 2006, at 00:17, Bèr Kessels wrote:
> Serious: What Drupal needs above all, is not some "Higher Language  
> To Talk To
> Lower Languages", but a way to make stuff easier.
>
> IMveryHO forms api surpassed its goal in this: What is easier: calling
> form_weight() or building an object-from-drupal-specific-arrays?  
> Point is
> clear.

I agree.  While Drupal becomes more powerful, it also becomes more  
difficult to develop for.

Drupal 4.7's new forms API is a prime example.  It is obviously great  
in terms of security and flexibility, but at the same time, it is  
also _much_ harder to use than the old form API.  What does that  
mean?  Well, that some people can make really fancy forms but that  
the majority of the people will find it more difficult to make basic  
forms.

This is somewhat problematic as we need more people that are good  
Drupal developers.  There is such a strong demand for good Drupal  
developers, yet which each new version, we add more barriers as a  
side effect of making Drupal more powerful.  As a result, we'll get  
many more users, but relatively fewer developers.  And that's a big  
problem.

For most of us eliminating the various SQL schemas makes perfect  
sense.  After all, most of us are expert Drupal developers, and as  
such, an incremental improvement is easy enough to deal with.   
However, for new Drupal developers, who are not intimate with  
Drupal's code, this just increases the barrier.

Why did you end up with Drupal to begin with?  Because it had an  
extremely powerful API for every single problem?  Or because it was  
clean code, easy to get into and make work?

The web is built by millions of individuals, many of which are  
amateurs. They continuously update, tweak and rebuild their  
websites.  We want Drupal to remain accessible for them.

Hence, the challenge is to make Drupal more powerful _AND_ easier to  
develop for.  This requires that we question certain development  
directions and look at them through the eyes of amateurs.

   http://buytaert.net/complexity-is-a-disease
   http://buytaert.net/why-php-and-not-java

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/