After 15 years of developing websites and applications in Drupal for a variety of clients and use cases, I made a pivotal decision: for my own product, Mapsemble.com, I chose the Symfony Framework instead. Given that Drupal is built on top of Symfony, I expected a lot of similarities - but I quickly realised that the two have less in common than I had assumed. My experience with Symfony gave me a fresh perspective on Drupal: its strengths, its unique "Drupalisms" and the debates that have shaped its evolution.

In this talk I will go through those Drupalisms - the conventions and design choices that we, as a Drupal community, have grown accustomed to. I'll be going through some of the strategies that Drupal has adhered to, some of the debates that have dominated the Drupal space as well as diving in to very specific comparisons between Drupal and Symfony when it comes to building a product.

This is not a "Drupal vs. Symfony" showdown, nor is it about picking a winner. Instead, it’s a candid reflection on what happens when a long-time Drupal developer steps outside the ecosystem—and what lessons we, as a community, might take from that experience.