Lessons from WordPress core on how to (not) write code

Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko, WordCamp Nordic 2019

Lessons from WordPress core
on how to (not) write code

You can’t afford WordPress code

WordPress core development

  1. technical debt → popularity
  2. popularity → volunteers
  3. volunteers → technical debt

WordPress in StackOverflow survey

Not “is it good?”
but “what is good?”

WP APIs development experience graph.

Best APIs

  1. Custom Post Types (74% positive)
  2. Plugin (hooks) (75%)
  3. Custom Taxonomies (70%)
  4. Queue (CSS and JS) (70%)
  5. Options and Transients (57%)

Best APIs — commonalities

Worst APIs

  1. Rewrite (59% negative)
  2. XML–RPC (61%)
  3. List Tables (53%)
  4. Editor (48%)
  5. Filesystem (47%)

Worst APIs — commonalities

WordPress is a story
not a blueprint

Be WordPress–good, not WordPress–bad

Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko


Rarst.net/slides/core-lessons