None. I just finished up such a contract myself earlier this month. I was speaking of building new sites from scratch.
> I agree about the spammy notifications and PHP code snippets. But sometimes code snippets can save time.
Put code in code files, under version control. Not in the database. Not in a blob field that gets eval()ed and is editable by users. This is sane web dev 101.
> I'd be interested to hear what good replacements there are for Wordpress+WooCommerce?
Drupal 7 + Drupal Commerce was very nice back in the day. I don't know the current state of Commerce under Drupal 9 but it's what I'd start looking at first if someone wanted me to build them a store from the ground up. Magento is still around, though I've heard that its code is incomprehensible. And if you're not afraid to take the thin framework or frameworkless route, the Omnipay library [1] combined with standard CRUD for the products should get you pretty far.
If their site is already Wordpress and they ask you to fix it, then your job is to fix their Wordpress site. Where is the shame and disrespect in that?
I agree about the spammy notifications and PHP code snippets. But sometimes code snippets can save time. It's better to have 10 code snippets to achieve 10 fixes, than 10 plugins to address those same fixes.
There must be a lot of developers out there paying their rent and feeding the cat from Wordpress plugin subscription earnings. While this does encourage the spammy ecosystem, it also encourages competition between plugin authors to maintain and develop quality plugins that do the job.
> Do these people actually not realize there's far better things out there?
I'd be interested to hear what good replacements there are for Wordpress+WooCommerce? I find WooCommerce slows down Wordpress, regardless of caching plugins and other tricks. It's annoying, and I'm genuinely interested in alternatives with as much flexibility and support?