There have been many attempts in the past. Some offered better performance, security, were easier to use, more lightweight, etc. However they all lacked the ecosystem that WordPress provides. They just didn't have the plugins and themes, the webhosters which optimize for WordPress, the developers and companies which are dedicated to developing for, maintaining and optimizing WordPress sites.
More enjoyable to develop for, IMO, but otherwise the comparison holds.
I would add that other PHP-based projects have had severe maintainability crises, poorer clarity of design, even worse code quality crises (Joomla, for example), major fallings-out and multiple forks (Joomla again).
WordPress got this far in part because it managed inevitable community fallings-out and egos much better. It's totally depressing to see what is happening.
The issue is how WordPress seems to be stuck in the ways of the mid-2000's. You can be a "senior full stack" developer in the WordPress ecosystem but you'll hit a wall once you start applying for more general PHP roles as everything from the standard coding style to how classes and namespaces are used are worlds apart.
I once taught someone to make this jump, who was convinced he would never be able to. It is definitely a mindset change but I think a good developer can do it. Especially since these days, class and namespace stuff and Composer dependencies are increasingly common in plugin development.
I love Laravel (especially with Lighthouse) but I think the hooks/actions model in WordPress is underrated in its simplicity and appropriateness for the task.
(I am not a fan of the standard WP coding style, TBH)
I do worry about the thousands of people out there that have no other marketable skill than WordPress and are not going to climb out.
Right. But this is because of a very simple, undeniable fact that is unpopular around these here parts:
There is nothing close to as good as WordPress at everything WordPress can be made to do.
No GUI-based CMS not built on PHP can be as flexibly hosted as one that is. PHP is easy and can be secured. There are no real PHP-based competitors for WordPress that are as easy to install, configure or use.
There are no CMSes that can get close to being as good for a bespoke mix of small ecommerce, member systems, digital downloads sales, form handling etc. Hosted or not hosted.
Say what you like about the block editor (personally I think it is an impressive but ultimately ten-year-plus project). But TinyMCE and shortcodes has proved painfully non-robust and there is no other block editor on an open source CMS that gets close to being open-ended enough for an extensible CMS. Gutenberg has some strengths over hosted solutions like e.g. the Squarespace editor.
There is no open-source CMS that rolls out security patches automatically the way Wordpress does, or can do so at the scale WordPress does.
HN people may dislike this, but it has not been out-competed because it is actually basically competent and extensible, and has no real jack-of-all-trades competitors at all. There's nothing with this level of contribution, extensibility, attention to detail, longevity or backwards compatibility.
Personally I think WP Engine needed a bit of a straightener; there are things they should not have done and there are things they could do. But this was not the way to go about it.
The damage Matt is doing, in particular with the "Secure Custom Fields" gaslighting bullshit is among the most depressing examples of willingly setting one's own hair on fire that I've ever seen.
(Edited for clarity, but sorry everyone, I'm waiting for a new coffee grinder to be delivered this morning)