I read somewhere (cannot recall source) that a programmer was capable of doing extremely complex and tailor-suited web pages using Drupal without writing a single line of code (using hooks), just using the GUI of suitable contributed modules. Is this at all possible?
Are the Drupal 7 (and 8) functions thought as a way of extending capability via contributed modules, or is it good practice to tailor-suit your own functionality via hard-code modifications of SQL queries via hook_views_pre_view
, hook_views_query_alter
, hook_views_pre_render
, theme_preprocess_page
and all of these available functions?
I suspect that most of the time being ready to face a difficult project would need to be spent on trying dozens of different contributed modules, mutual compatibility, flexibility, etc., in order to reduce the custom code you would need.
I am not sure about this commentator being truly honest, but I find difficult not to create my own custom modules and modify queries, template.php, etc., in order to get the desired results, sometimes even by fixing long existing bugs in some contributed modules.