Right after Drupal 7 was released in the beginning of the year, the talk started about what Drupal 8 should look like. One of the changes many Drupal developers would like to see is dubbed ‘smallcore’, a slimmer and smaller out-of-the-box experience of the Drupal framework. But it seems like smallcore advocates have opened up a can of worms, or much rather, a box of LEGO bricks.

While the ‘building bricks’ idea is inherent to Drupal, the core as it is right now offers a lot of support to users, while giving them the possibility to extend their Drupal framework using add-on modules.

The apparent downside to smallcore advocates is that Drupal core makes very specific assumptions about what the website will look like once it’s developed. Drupal developers complain that they spend more time undoing the program’s assumptions than actually working on their projects. Smallcore advocates want Drupal to start out from a next-to-nothing core, using add-ons and contrib features to individualize their Drupal experience.

To put it in LEGO terms, they want to start from something like this. And then start building something like this.

You get the point: Not good. If you are a seasoned developer and know exactly what you are doing, smallcore might enhance your web-building experience. If not: not so much.

Weren’t usability and user-orientation once the big pros of Drupal? Drupal is supposed to help web developers making their jobs easier and more time-efficient. Apparent downside here: this. People might be temped to build websites that looks very similar to one another. This smallcore manifesto uses a different type of children's toys: stuffed animals. Check it out!

What do we learn from it? Both extreme options render sub-standard results. Drupal developers should keep in mind that maintaining the right balance between usability and flexibility is crucial for an application like Drupal. The core can definitely be slimmer and more efficient, but the more features you take away from core, the harder you make it to use it.

It’s true of smallcore what is true of other things: Enjoy with moderation. It might seem a great idea at the time, but when you wake up with a terrible headache, you might have had one LEGO brick too many (under your pillow).