As someone who'd call himself developer and still spends a lot of time building themes I have to say I disagree with that sentiment. :)

The first part or the second? ;)

:)

Some of the things people want to do with WordPress is just like ... WHY????

I'm looking for opinions on meta libraries. I've been a big fan of CMB2 since it's release, but it seems that ACF is far more popular (at least from the questions asked here on WPSE). CMB2 seems to be a little more bare metal and dev oriented. What are ya'll using these days?

Meta Box

Right :-)

I meant as in wordpress.org/plugins/meta-box to be clear :)

Oh snap!

So much choice...docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

Thanks @Rarst , this is a new one to me.

Thanks @kraftner, haven't looked at this in a while.

yeah, way too much choice, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be progressing in core (and if it did I wouldn't be too hopeful for good clean solution)

I still love CMB2, but the constant barrage of ACF related questions here got me wondering.

some days I want to try adapt Symfony Forms (or maybe Laravel bits) just to experiment

ACF is exceptionally popular among users, devs tend to scoff at it for performance and stuff

Well hey, some nice features landed in 4.7. I hear ya on the fields thing though...

Cool, I think I will continue to scoff then.

I used ACF at work once, this room had been making fun of me for a week :D

lol okay!

Page builders pretty much make me want to quit development and go live in the woods.

yeaaah, even tougher with those

Sounds like ACF is in that same territory. Thanks for the feedback, guys!

If you're a GUI type person... I like using TYPES. Very straight forward and simple to use IMO.

Isn't Types entirely premium though, or do they have a free version?

Nope. Their main plugin is free.

The one that actually allows you to do what you need to do... (Data-wise)

wordpress.org/plugins/types

I'm more of a code guy that wants a nice UI for the users but doesn't want them breaking stuff. CMB2 has been pretty much perfect for me needs, but since things change so fast I like to put my ear to the ground every once in a while.

They have an API

and if you want to spend some money. They have even more plugins available which allow you to pretty much do ANYTHING without code.

But I have no money and want to do it all with code :-D

but if you know how to code, the main plugin (which is free) is very powerful.

wp-types.com/documentation/customizing-sites-using-php

There's the documentation.

Thanks, @MichaelEcklund!

np. hope you find it useful.

ACF??????? /me running and screaming

I still find it hard to understand what is the use of all those libraries. Yes you probably need to spend an extra hour to create some utility functions but on the plus side you don't have any dependencies on 3rd party code

I think meta box (and options) libraries can be handy. I've written my own, but at a certain point the stuff in the wild (namely CMB2) just surpassed what I had created. I'm getting the impression that ACF just goes out far beyond what I'm looking for.

I like free, extendable, light-weight, bare metal stuff. Essentially thin wrappers for the existing APIs.