With Drupal 7 right around the corner, I have recently put myself to the task of ramping up on what's new, what's changed, and what do I – as a module developer – need to know when I sit down to code my first D7 module (or upgrade one of my D6 modules *shameless plug*). I've spent the last few weeks scouring over the D7 core and API documentation, and let me be the first to tell you if haven't heard it yet (unlikely): better times are ahead. For all of us.

The amount of API changes from D6 to D7 are broad and sweeping. D7 is certainly still Drupal, meaning that it still feels and acts like Drupal. Nodes are still nodes that can have taxonomy and comments, users are still users with roles and permissions, so on and so forth. But nearly everything under the hood and in the UI, for that matter, has been improved upon and/or refactored. From a coder’s perspective, I am soon to be in developer’s heaven when D7 goes stable. From the standpoint of being a framework, D7’s API is more mature and modern. You could almost think of D6 as a kid in highschool and with D7 that kid has graduated and is now ready for the real world. The refactoring that has taken place over the last couple of years and all of the new features now available will be a boon for module and theme developers alike. This also explains just why we have had to wait so long for a stable release. It’s almost as if you took your grocery-getter car to Q from James Bond for an “upgrade”. But, I digress.