Globally, it's not.

The latest version of WordPress is still compatible with PHP 5.2.4 and above, so anyone who builds a WordPress site is effectively shipping a PHP 5.2 app.

They do recommend php 5.4 though, and afaik they do try to push the community to upgrading.

It still means they can't depend on any feature introduced in PHP 5.3 or later. No closures, no namespaces.

Ditto for any theme or plugin that tries to be compatible with all versions of PHP that WordPress itself supports.

While I do agree with you, I want to make a distinction between shipping and building an application.

IMHO the term "developer" should not be applied to those that can just ship but rather those who can also build.

It doesn't matter if they are web, desktop, nor low-systems developer actually

Most auto-called web developers are just "web masters"

Now you're just redefining "developer".

No True Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, and No True Developer just installs WordPress.

On the other hand, even Rails and Django encourage you to use the ORM whenever possible, so even a "developer" who builds apps on a modern framework is unlikely to be familiar with advanced SQL features.

For me, if you had to write even a single line of a Turing complete language to a file (so shell scripts yes, but one-time shell commands no) to install WP, that would count as development. Otherwise, it's just installation. Note: I have never installed WP.

Do people really consider ./configure && make && make install and its equivalents to be development now?

Not really. Most web developers are scare of using the cli.

Last time I checked the WP install process was something like...

1. download zip, extract

2. change your some config file

3. upload whole folder using FTP

4. go to /install or something, and from there..

5. click, click, click, edit text, click, click, click ...

That was only if the web developer was in hardcore mode, otherwise it was just _log into cpanel to use one-click installer_