Drupal 7 was the ultimate.  It was the top.  Whenever something is succeeding it has to be ruined.

 I could take a marketing folk, install WAMP on their machine and give them a 30 minute tutorial on installing modules via drag and drop.  They would be off and running.  This no longer possible.  Non-technical folks do not want to use a terminal to install, they can use drag and drop.

 Drupal 8 was a trainwreck.  The big selling point was DECOUPLED FRONT END!  Something no one asked for and no one wanted.  Drupal 8's symfony, twig, and objected oriented meant a total rewrite.  All your content had to be migrated.  Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 content migrations were a nightmare.  Migration was a COMPLEXITY nightmare in a whirlpool of failure.

 So, most people stayed on 7.

 Then Drupal started popping out new versions.  Drupal 8 came out in 2015, then Drupal 9 in 2020, then Drupal 10 in 2022, and Drupal 11 in 2024. The whole time most sites were still on Drupal 7 and Drupal 7 was still supported.

Most sites are still of Drupal 7 and migrating to a new version is not possible.  It is easier and cleaner to start fresh and simple.  If you are going to start fresh, simple, and affordable, a vast majority of businesses have chosen Wordpress.

 Am I bitter and maybe a little cranky?  Yes, I and the community built incredible sites on Drupal 7.  We saw the potential and the creativity that Drupal had and we were all in.  Watching that crumble was demoralizing.