Having built lots of WordPress sites over the years, I can give you 2 strong reasons why it continues to grow, despite being disliked by software engineers:
1. There is no easier way to set up a standard marketing/business website, despite many quality attempts to build replacements. The plugin library is a big part of this.
2. It's extremely easy for anyone to start hacking on, leading to lots of developers "cutting their teeth" on WordPress by following online tutorials. Show me a self-taught front-end developer and I'll be shocked if they didn't learn on a WordPress site. This has good & bad aspects, of course.
1. There is no easier way to set up a standard marketing/business website, despite many quality attempts to build replacements. The plugin library is a big part of this.
2. It's extremely easy for anyone to start hacking on, leading to lots of developers "cutting their teeth" on WordPress by following online tutorials. Show me a self-taught front-end developer and I'll be shocked if they didn't learn on a WordPress site. This has good & bad aspects, of course.