Much of this is undoubtedly due to Ben’s relentless dedication to good code and good design, but there must be more to it. Competency is rare, but there seems to be a mindset at work here that’s even more rare.

In my work at the D&C, I’ve been playing a lot with Drupal. It seems like a basic CMS at first - post a news item, upload an image, what-have-you - but if you’re one of the lucky ones, you discover the API.

With Drupal’s API, you can change just about anything about the way the site looks and functions. And here’s the key - all without editing the core code. Want to add a field to the login form? No need to edit the Drupal code - you can write your own module that’ll use Drupal’s API to add it.

Compare this to, say, phpBB, which promotes changes to core code as the main method of making hacks (to the point where I’ve seen the developers actively bash suggestions of a hook system). There are some nifty hacks for it, to be sure, but editing core code has huge problems - you either can’t upgrade (security holes bedamned) or you lose all your hacks every few weeks. You’re screwed.

The tremendously popular Joomla CMS is possibly the best prominent example of these failings. We considered it initially for The Loop, but it was far too limiting. Want an article to be placed in more than one category? No-can-do - not without replacing the core content module entirely!!! Add in the pay-to-play and poorly coded nature of most of these extensions and it becomes an unusable nightmare for anything beyond a site that functions almost exactly as the original coders intended.

There’s the key, I think. Tarski and Drupal are both designed to be used in ways the original coders might never have anticipated. Tarski can be tweaked - without touching the core code - to look entirely different than the stock install. Drupal could be turned into something so distant from it’s original use as a web FTP client - again, without touching the core code.

This is the way software for the web should be made. With proper design, it’s possible to make systems that are extraordinary powerful without sacrificing the security, new features, and more that come with keeping up-to-date core code.