Chasing Drupal

The growth of Drupal, in terms of book publishing, is on a dramatic increase. Within the last 6 months, there have been more than I can recite off the top of my head. (though Robert Douglass's and David Mercer's come to mind (sorry I don't speak German)). In general, I think this is wonderful thing for our community (with a few reservations).

And no, my problems have nothing to do with vague notions of an "open source spirit" where everything is free to anyone. Friends, I worked 11 hours this Easter Sunday. I actually don't remember the last day I truly had off. No -- my reserverations are not of the idealist sort. Rather, I'd just like to bring up the obvious: Drupal is a rabbit, and paper is a tortoise.

I like to pretend I'm "on top of things". However, on a daily basis drupal's CVS alerts me of giant changes to CCK, Views, and OG -- modules which in a sense, are building a new, psychedelic layer to drupal (which I haven't quite wrapped my head around yet...), but which change on a daily basis.

I've written a couple influential tutorials in my time. I've always made a habit playing with the cutting edge... That said, I suspect a tutorial I wrote 3 days after CCK was released is now unnecessarily complex -- and that the CCK authors have figured out a better way. Not to mention, I know for a fact that the great forms API is far easier now, than someone who took the techniques I wrote 4 months ago would have suspected.

This has all being hastily written down, but I'd like to bring it down to one major point:

Drupal's core developers need to write more!

As something of an outsider to programming, I must say: there are moments of genious I've stumbled upon in Drupal's code -- and I feel guilty sometimes when it is I that has to make this genious obvious to everyone else. For once, Maestro, take a wide open opprotunity to show everyone else what is about.

That said, ya'll work to fast for publishers, so maybe its time you start a blog.

Well... why not?