To no one’s surprise, several Gutenberg talks appeared throughout the WCUS conference schedule, especially on Friday.
Miina Sikk from XWP spoke that afternoon about extending Gutenberg core blocks in the context of the AMP for WordPress plugin. (The official release of the 1.0 version — with Gutenberg support — coincided with WCUS.) Anyone deeply involved in Gutenberg development should examine this talk and plugin in depth.
Andrew Taylor’s talk, “Holy Blockamole: Tips On Learning Block Development” (his slides are here), also should be given serious consideration.
Gary Pendergast had one of the first Gutenberg-related presentations on Friday morning, “The Future of WordPress is Gutenberg.” As you might expect from a title like that, Gary had some of the most striking and memorable quotes for developers at the conference:
The next iterations in WordPress will move us closer to platform agnosticism. They’ll run on mobile devices, different CMSes, and voice-driven devices. We will separate content from presentation.
Gutenberg does seem to begin to move WordPress in this direction.
Regarding the steep learning curve involved in Gutenberg development, Gary strongly cautioned developers against looking too far into the past: “Don’t let nostalgia take away the work that you got today,” he advised. “Don’t let it convince you that you can’t keep up. You learned new tools before; you can do it again.”
