---
date: 2024-03-04
topic: Centarro and Drupal Commerce
guests:
  - Ryan Szrama
transistor:
  id: ab539bef
links:
  - - Centarro
    - https://www.centarro.io
  - - Ryan on Twitter
    - https://twitter.com/ryanszrama
  - - Ryan on Drupal Answers
    - https://drupal.stackexchange.com/users/866/ryan-szrama
talking_points:
  - eCommerce, Ubercart and Drupal Commerce.
  - How Commerce Guys started.
  - How Ryan started in the eCommerce space.
  - The origins of Drupal Commerce and Commerce Guys.
  - Commerce Kickstart.
quotes:
  - The best code isn't the most novel or most compact, it's the most easily readable and easily extendable (RS).
  - My only resource for learning PHP was php.net (RS)
  - I'm a self-taught Developer or community-taught, I suppose (OD).
  - Porting osCommerce into Drupal, which became Ubercart (RS).
  - Do we do this in Ubercart and Drupal 6 that we know works, or this new thing that was Drupal Commerce in Drupal 7 (OD).
  - It was built in Ubercart and was in production until quite recently, considering we're in 2024 (OD).
  - Once you get thoroughly entrenched in a platform, the cost to re-platform outweighs the cost of maintaining it in-house (RS).
  - If there's 10,000 of anybody, they're going to want to pay for support (RS).
  - How do we convince them to invest in an upgrade that doesn't see them jettison Drupal entirely? (RS)
  - One thing I like about Drupal Commerce is its flexibility. (OD)
  - It doesn't need to be a t-shirt or book shop. You can do some outside the box things with it. (OD)
  - Being a native extension of Drupal has a lot more advantages and pros than cons. (RS)
  - Ubercart was more "batteries included" and "this is what it does", whereas Drupal Commerce is more flexible and although it requires a bit more setup to begin with, you can plug it together the way you want to. (OD)
  - Our vision was to go the next step of getting off the Drupal island. (RS)
  - The Commerce Addressing library is now over 17,000,000 downloads. (OD)
  - Composer allowed us to separate our projects and separate our concerns. (RS)
  - Do you know when you should not use Views and when you decouple that component and use JavaScript and the REST API? (RS)
  - If we can reduce the number of times introduce those kinds of problems, that's how I would certify somebody. (RS)
chapters:
  - 00:00 Introduction and DrupalCon Lille.
  - 6:00 How did you get started in software development?
  - 17:36 Getting into eCommerce.
  - 19:14 The origins of Commerce Guys and Drupal Commerce.
  - 20:26 How Oliver started with eCommerce projects.
  - 22:68 Ubercart for Drupal 7?
  - 30:04 Commerce Kickstart.
  - 34:08 Commerce flexibility.
  - 35:52 More commerce Kickstart.
  - 38:62 Ubercart and Commerce differences.
  - 40:34 The Commerce Kickstart project template.
  - 42:50 Building Drupal Commerce 2.
  - 46:38 Releasing new things.
  - 51:58 Certified Centarro partners?
  - 57:38 Centarro roadmap.
  - 62:06 Wrapping up.
---

This week, Oliver is joined by Ryan Szrama, CEO of Centarro, to discuss Drupal Commerce, Commerce Kickstart, Mario Kart and the dreaded `cache_form` table.