While "there's a module for that" has become a hallmark of the Drupal community and defines it's strength and flexibility as an open-source leader, long-time Drupal developers know that it comes with a price tag. The oft-followed "open buffet syndrome" can lead to sites that are complex, fragile, slow, and tedious to work on, ultimately impacting the total cost of ownership for the site. Furthermore, the open buffet leads some developers to feel like little more than click monkeys, what Mike Crittenden referred to as "Drupal's golden handcuffs."

Minimalist Drupal Development is a practical and philosophical approach to Drupal development, and prioritizes principles such as:

• Judicious module selection
• Leveraging Drupal core and its APIs when possible
• Utilizing contrib code as opposed to contrib modules where appropriate
• Effective client communication strategies to keep projects and implementations lean

In this session, we'll look at a handful of examples of how Minimalist Drupal Development plays out in practice, such as:

• Building complex sites without Views
• Knowing how to evaluate and build from contrib modules
• Setting up your IDE to dig through code and leverage Drupal core
• Using Drush make, install profiles and a custom dev module to write reusable code
• Structuring your Features modules to encapsulate functionality
• Working effectively with clients/stakeholders to choose minimalist approaches

Come to this session and experience how you, too, can break Drupal's golden handcuffs, and learn to truly love developing for Drupal again.