Having never peeked at WordPress internals, can someone give examples of what they see as poor code at the heart of WordPress? It is 18 years old, is the code really still a mess?
WordPress alternatives like Wix or Squarespace are closed-source, but the HTML/CSS generated by these services is simply dreadful.
As for Static Site Generators (SSG) - liked by developers but by no-one else - they are particularly unsuitable for non-technical users and lacking in features (by design). They are certainly not a serious alternative to WordPress.
It has a very different architecture from what web developers are used to. It has an event driven architecture, somewhat like C. During the process of running the code on a HTTP request, there are multiple hooks (actions and filters) that get called, where you can attach your own function in a plugin or theme.
About 5 years ago I saw a lot of requests like "When will WordPress move to MVC?", but those questions seem to have died out mostly. Then there is the OOP architecture of data and communication that is loved by a lot of developers. I think Joomla and Drupal have moved into this direction.
This makes the code in WordPress look oldfashioned, it is partly still procedural code, with some classes added into it. WordPress community very much wants things to be backwards compatible, and so far that works out.
WordPress alternatives like Wix or Squarespace are closed-source, but the HTML/CSS generated by these services is simply dreadful.
As for Static Site Generators (SSG) - liked by developers but by no-one else - they are particularly unsuitable for non-technical users and lacking in features (by design). They are certainly not a serious alternative to WordPress.