WordPress is proof that clean code doesn't matter. Security doesn't matter. Out of the box performance doesn't matter. At least none of these matter if you are the 800 lb gorilla in the market and everyone else is trying to take a piece out of you.
but it didn't start out as an 800 lb gorilla. Simply saying it's an 800 lb gorilla in the room is lazy.
Well yes and no. They were very few good blog focused CMS at the time. A contemporary one that comes to my mind and that actually predate Wordpress was Dotclear (which is still alive and still focusing on blogging). More general CMS like Typo3, Drupal, SPIP, Plone to name only a few open source ones were already around too and much more capable than Wordpress was.
What Wordpress did very well at the beginning, was focusing on one thing: blogging for non technical people. It was a much more limited software but that made it much easier for so much people. And it came exactly during the blog boom and only with time became a more general purpose CMS. But if you had to build a website for your business it was a very bad choice at the time.
Bottom line: making good software is one thing, but timing is everything.
Got something to say about how WP compares to others when it comes to man-hours (assuming you can buy any and all plugins you want)? Honest question, because I have no idea about CMS.
> they overprice and they forget people use multiple plugins
People who complain about the prices also forget that a lot of these plugins take months or years to develop. You’re (we’ll not you since you made it clear you don’t pay the devs) literally getting thousands of man hours for like 60 bucks per year.
Absolutely so. Those are things for people to play, while the only thing taht matters is value. Does clean code provide value? No. Does security? No either.
At least it isn't Magento.