I learned I could learn how things worked deep down in the code. I had never peeked under the hood of WordPress, Joomla, MODx, drupal, EZ publish, and other behemoths I used in the past. With Kirby, I feel confident opening up the core and reading through the functions.
Just today, I created my first Kirbytag with no prior knowledge of tags. I opened one that looked like what I wanted, copied it and made my changes, hit save, and it just worked! (It’s a tag that output’s the content of SVG in a figure like an image tag does, and I’ll share it soon).
I also learned how to help others as a mean to help yourself. I’ve been very active on the forum lately and I’ve learned more about PHP and Kirby in those weeks than I did in years before that. I’ve for years been a passive listener on the web, relying on other people finding solutions for the same kind of problem I had without ever asking for help or providing help…
Last week, while trying to help out somebody on the forum having trouble with the RSS feed plugin, I dove into some folders I had never seen before and was amazed by how clear and simple everything felt.
I learned that you can make something incredibly powerful without complexity. And as @luxlogica said, I learned that end-users who aren’t developers just feel way more comfortable with Kirby because of that.
And last but not least, I learned that helpful, cheerful and amazing communities still exist on the web. That’s a huge achievement !