I have mixed feelings about the Drupal 8 end of life. Obviously we’ve all gotten a little bit older (and hopefully wiser) since 2015 when D8 was released into the world. I don’t even use Drupal 8 anymore, at least not in most circumstances. I’m entirely Drupal 9 in my day to day! Why then is this a “mixed feelings” sort of moment?
Drupal 8 represented one of the most challenging jumps in skill for me in my career. If you don’t know, my educational background is in English and Design. I came to the world of web development (nearly 20 years ago) through a friend in college and a strong desire to stop working retail. I learned the basics of HTML / CSS / JS / PHP and started consulting as a Wordpress freelancer. I made the jump to Drupal in 2009 near the end of the Drupal 6 lifecycle.
All of that was going swimmingly until Drupal 8 came along. Trying to take on object orientation (something I only knew about in principal, not practice), dependency management (something I knew essentially nothing about), AND Drupal 8’s updates to things like Configuration Management, entities, etc. was a massive jump that I was quite struggling with. It was made all the worse by working in an environment where some of these advances required technology updates that my organization wasn’t prepared to support. Ultimately, I shifted careers not long after the Drupal 8 release to move to Acquia.
Today, I’m a senior manager overseeing some of the biggest, most complex Drupal builds in the world and working with an incredible team of Drupalists. I teach people from multibillion dollar enterprises, universities, and government organizations on how to do Drupal “the right way.” And I think my personal struggles and experience shifting into Drupal 8 make me all the better for it. I failed for the better part of TWO YEARS to wrap my head around and prepare for the lift from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. I attended Drupalcons, I setup local environments, I beat my head against a very solid wall. But gradually, I started to understand, and my painful crawling turned into a walk, then progressed to a run, and finally into a sprint.
So for me, it’s bittersweet to see Drupal 8 coming to an end. On the one hand, six years is a terrific run! I’m all in on Drupal 9 and very pleased with the progress the community has made these past years. On the other, it’s an end to the Drupal 8 era and we’re leaving behind a technology that drove a really significant shift in my life. I’ve gotten to work on some incredible projects with Drupal 8 (and unfortunately, many of them I cannot talk about publicly). But the MTA Countdown Clocks are certainly a high point from this time and one I CAN discuss openly. If you’re one of the many many people I’ve had the pleasure of working with outside that project, know that I appreciate you and the opportunity we had to collaborate!
If you haven’t completed the update to Drupal 9 yet, I would strongly recommend you prioritize this! I have written on these topics several times, and I hope you take advantage of the material:
https://mikemadison.net/blog/2021/5/6/the-time-has-come-start-on-your-drupal-9-update-asap
https://mikemadison.net/blog/2020/9/16/planning-your-drupal-9-upgrade-from-drupal-8
https://mikemadison.net/blog/2020/10/5/updating-the-drupal-govcon-website-to-drupal-9
To draw on some most excellent pop culture signoffs…
So long, Drupal 8 and thanks for all the fish
Goodbye, Drupal 8. I'm gonna miss you. You had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end.
“I wish that Drupal 8 had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
To everyone out there also feeling a little bittersweet, good luck to you today! Onward to Drupal 10.
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