The Future of WordPress: Q&A w/ Founder Matt Mullenweg

With WordPress 3.2 just released, people are already focusing on what's next.  Here's a great interview with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg: The Future of WordPress.

I liked his quote about community being the "killer app" of open-source projects:

The early mistake I made in WordPress development was trying to do it all myself, even though it was an Open Source project. In the WordPress community a consistent theme has been that the more people contribute their best work the better the end product is, and my primary job is just to get out of the way. It took me a while to learn that, but now it’s ingrained.

Another part that resonated with me was how having technical skills can be so empowering.  My first website took me two months to build.  The last one took me two days.  It's a big confidence boost to know that you can have an idea and immediately create something that users can see:

If you’re a developer you’re already five steps ahead of everyone else. Scripting is the new literacy, and the ability to learn and execute on your ideas without relying on anybody else is going to be invaluable as you iterate and experiment on building something. It’s good to build for yourself first, because in the worst-case scenario where no one else likes it, at least you will.

One answer that stood out was when Mullenweg named which rival content management systems he was watching.  I'm sure there are web developers who are chomping at the bit to get a full-featured, easy-to-use CMS that's run on Ruby on Rails, Python, or Node.js. 

I wouldn't get too concerned about which platform ends up winning.  The big winner in the end is the user.