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I love Python, I think JavaScript is sort of OK and I did a lot of serious programming in ActionScript 2&3, both of which are quite simular to JS. I was basically forced into doing PHP by the market. I never really liked PHP but I really never hated it either. The thing about PHP is that it's so specific in its domain and such a hack that no one doing PHP development for a living will go around boasting about the greatness of the language. There is a refreshing lack of arrogance in the PHP community which, in my observation, makes it very easy for n00bs to pick up. As a result we get countless people reinventing the wheel in PHP and discovering basic programming patters anew for them selves and starting yet another Framework/CMS/Whatnot and the results often are really bizar. But the community remains alive that way.

F.I. I'm working myself into Drupal at my current employer because it's the prime go-to CMS here. It's like a live alice in wonderland trip. A strange historically grown mess, barely tamed by sanitiy and a relentless chaotic community that all by accident seem to come up with hacks that somehow solve the problem in some way. And yet there's a solid global corporation building its business all around Drupal. The surreal hacks with which the Drupal people solve their problems are mindboggling, and yet everybody seems totally OK with it. And Drupals track record of deployments is impressive.

I guess with PHP it's somehow like the C vs. Lisp argument: C is so shitty compared to Lisp that you have to get yourself together and work as a team, or you won't get anything done. Hence Lisp has this loner exisitance on the side and all the real work gets done in this ancient C thing.

PHP is a simular thing. It is so bad that no respectable programmer would pick it up voluntarly nowadays, but yet it grew out of Perl (which is worse in some ways), was somewhat of an improvement and was at the right place at the right time. The badness of PHP accounts for its considerable lack of arrogance (compare the PHP community to the Ruby community for instance) and for no one feeling guilty when he does a quick bad hack.

As a programmer you don't feel dirty when you do bad programming in PHP, you already felt that when you picked PHP as the solution. Hence quite a bit of work gets done in PHP. That's why PHP has Drupal and Typo3 and Joomla and the Java Community has nothing of that proportions. The barrier of entry into PHP is *very* low which gives it its momentum.

My 2 cents.

I think I know the origin of this tax bill and what it is intended for.

Acquia - http://www.acquia.com/ - is a large firm that specializes in Drupal. A lot of the work they do is around setting up, configuring and maintaining Drupal websites.

While they don't produce the majority of the code that is in Drupal, they do provide a lot of services around it to consumers and other businesses. This is really a tax on VARs and other people who implement Drupal using their services.

I am sure there are a lot of other companies that operate in a similar space. While I don't like it, I can see the potential revenues to be drawn in through such a tax.

What you want to do is possible, but might take more than a few months -- think a year of sustained effort and attention. Building off of previous posted suggestions, if you have some decent web skills perhaps you might take a look at Drupal. There are an insane number of jobs, BUT you need to know what you are doing to get gigs. Drupal is very capable and powerful. It also has a steep learning curve and can be very frustrating to learn...which may inadvertently relate to why all of the jobs aren't filled. However, there are tons of free how-to screen casts, the community is very active, and you can learn at home. If you want to check it out I would suggest using the Acquia DAMP development stack as it is the easiest way to get setup on your home computer: https://network.acquia.com/downloads/7.x

I've noticed that a lot of the screen casts tend to be very pointed how-tos. If you don't mind paying $25 for a months access, Lynda.com has some good tutorials on Drupal 7 which may help you get a good overview. After doing the essential training you can see if Drupal clicks for you or not.

If you want to go the Drupal route, make a website for yourself as part of the learning process, do the normal networking things things like signup at Drupal.org and join LinkedIn and its various groups with interests similar to yours. Then look around locally and start making websites for people, small businesses, local charities, social groups, schools, local political candidates, etc. You might donate your time initially since you are learning, but get them to pay their own hosting fees. Participate in the Drupal community by submitting good bug reports, answer the questions of others when you have figured something out, attend meetings of the local user group, contribute to documentation, etc. By this time you will have gone through the process a few times and be able to leverage previous projects, have figured out hosting, and started to get a portfolio. Once you are an expert and have a portfolio, recruiters will start calling you.

Good luck.

We have a huge need to hire a ton of Drupal folks w/LAMP experience. Apply online here http://www.acquia.com/careers

Then use Atrium or Acquia. Both provide turn-key social sites built on Drupal.

The point is, these guys are going to be spending 90% of their time writing behind-the-scenes functionality to make everything work, and 10% making it look good and easy to use. Drupal already provides the first 90%. If they really believe in open source, they could be contributing to work already done and making it better -- and end up with a better product than they could do on their own.

Sure, these guys are young and have time to waste. More power to them. But when their pet project is gone and forgotten, Drupal and projects built on Drupal will still be around. That is the whole point of open source

[snip]

Now, compare 'Drupal' to 'Microsoft'. Maybe everybody HERE knows how painful it can be to get MS stuff to work, but nobody is going to be fired for saying MS because it's the biggest commodity vendor in the software space.

Look in the mirror: are you trusted there? When you are fired, who is MEGACORP going to go to when there's a problem?

[snip]

Acquia, provider of commercial supported Drupal ?

Whether you use WebSphere from IBM or Sharepoint from Microsoft, you have the ability to leverage an API and develop a custom solution around something that has a few things.

1. A community.
2. Documentation
3. Support

Now I am all for open source in an environment that deems it important, but having an SLA for a solution that is now going to become your intra/extranet is important -- and Drupal doesn't provide that. Sharepoint does, and so does Websphere.

All these things are available for open source solutions as well. If you don't think the Drupal community is adequate, there are companies that provide managed Drupal solutions and support. If you need an SLA, you can get one. If you need design or implementation services, they are available from a growing list of consulting firms. Drupal's code is open and documented, and if you can't read code, there are plenty of books. We handle our own Drupal projects internally, but not because we have to. There are many options.

Disclaimer: I work for http://acquia.com/ , and we provide commercial support and network services for the open-source Drupal CMS. Over several weeks, we worked with Microsoft to make sure Drupal would be well represented in the Windows Application Gallery to provide IIS users access to an easy to use Drupal installation. The result is here http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/AcquiaDrupal.aspx We already provide Drupal Windows and Mac stack installers for Apache at http://acquia.com/downloads and so this was a natural extension of our mission to increase Drupal usage. Overall it was a positive experience and a way for us to ensure that the Drupal market continues to grow by supporting end-users who are committed to Microsoft's IIS and can't or prefer not use Apache. Microsoft of course also is motivated to ensure IIS is a great platform for any application, so we see this as a win-win. If you'd like to learn more, our CTO Dries Buytaert wrote about it when the Windows Application Gallery launched at http://buytaert.net/microsoft-promoting-drupal

Disclaimer: I work for http://acquia.com/ , and we provide commercial support and network services for the open-source Drupal CMS. Over several weeks, we worked with Microsoft to make sure Drupal would be well represented in the Windows Application Gallery to provide IIS users access to an easy to use Drupal installation. The result is here http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/AcquiaDrupal.aspx We already provide Drupal Windows and Mac stack installers for Apache at http://acquia.com/downloads and so this was a natural extension of our mission to increase Drupal usage. Overall it was a positive experience and a way for us to ensure that the Drupal market continues to grow by supporting end-users who are committed to Microsoft's IIS and can't or prefer not use Apache. Microsoft of course also is motivated to ensure IIS is a great platform for any application, so we see this as a win-win. If you'd like to learn more, our CTO Dries Buytaert wrote about it when the Windows Application Gallery launched at http://buytaert.net/microsoft-promoting-drupal

If you are new to Drupal, and want the fastest way to evaluate it, download and install Acquia Drupal in 5 min. Acquia Drupal is the same open source Drupal you can get on Drupal.org, but packaged with the most popular modules (so you don't have to figure out which of the 2000+ modules on drupal.org to start with), some network services including faceted search like you see on amazon, and a Mac or Windows stack installer for those who would prefer not to configure an xAMP stack for Drupal (or if you have a stack and there is a tarball too). Free download at http://acquia.com/downloads Full disclosure, I work @ Acquia.

MVC has nothing to do with security and scalability (other than "separation of logic and presentation makes them both easier"). Drupal uses a separation of content and presentation sometimes called PAC.

Scalability has to do with intelligent caching, of which Drupal has plenty. Its pluggable cache system lets you use a database, flat files, or memcache for caching.

Security has to do with how code is written and how many eyes are on it. Code is written according to Drupal's coding standards, and developers learn to write secure code or they are slapped around by Drupal's dedicated security team.

The terminology is not vague. Modules are modular code components. Themes are the way things look. Slashdot itself was the originator of the term "block". And a view is...just what you'd expect.

Open source in general suffers from "good enough for my site". If you want great code you either become a developer and write it or you sponsor a developer. Drupal's community is like any in open source. There are superstars who write awesome code, and people just getting started who are finding their way. A site like drupalmodules.com can help you tell which modules were written by which people.

Drupal's tagging was one of the first to do full taxonomic implementation with multiple controlled vocabularies, not like most CMS's that thought a single "Categories" or "Tags" was enough. The simple "free tagging" option was added later.

Drupal's releases are getting farther apart and with the advent of commercially supported Drupal API stability is growing.

Contradiction complete.