Howdy — lead of WordPress here. When the article was written in January of 2018, I would agree Gutenberg wasn't ready for core. Ten months later, it's come a long way. There have been 41 public releases of Gutenberg, and close to 600,000 sites are using it already. It's the mostly widely tested (and adopted) new feature code we've had in any release of WordPress in my memory. It might not be for everyone, which is why we created the Classic Editor plugin which you can install today, and when 5.0 comes out in a few weeks your site will look and work pretty much exactly like it does today, and you can migrate to Gutenberg at your leisure, or perhaps not at all. (There are lots of ways to post and interact with WordPress, including the command line via wp-cli.)
A big advantage of blocks is they will allow us to simplify many of the different concepts and interfaces throughout WordPress, including our old WYSIWYG sorta-blocks, shortcodes, widgets, menus, and embeds of all types. It solves literally hundreds of interactions where people used to get stuck in our old WYSIWYG and either switch to code view to fix things, or just give up. Like all software, the 5.0 release of WordPress isn't a finish line, it's a starting one. We are already planning for 5.1 and beyond (including minimum PHP updates) and we look forward to bringing the fast, public iteration cycle that Gutenberg has demonstrated to more parts of core.
Hey Matt! I'm not denying the massive amount of testing and effort going into Gutenberg, as I do see it. I am however worried about the new block editor hurting the good reputation WordPress has, particularly in regards to accessibility.
Hacker News isn't the right place for this discussion, I know, but I want to get it out there. Accessibility is one of the best features of WordPress, even if most people don't know about it. Keeping the WordPress editor accessible not only helps people with disabilities, as it also aids people who may have a temporary ailment (holding their baby, and just having one hand available, for example), or even "invisible" disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, or an Autism Spectrum disorder.
The new block editor has made tremendous strides at improving individual component's accessibility recently, and I believe that's where the confusion and miscommunication comes in between all the core teams. Code-wise, the block editor is quite accessible; zoomed out, the editor as a whole isn't. It's a UX issue, more than a development one. It's what happens when the design isn't with accessibility in mind.
I don't think it's worth punting release, but I really would like to see more work on documentation and warnings in the core to people who rely on assistive technologies. If you don't know the layout of the block editor and had to navigate it with only a keyboard and no eyesight, it's incredibly confusing! If there was proper documentation, you might be able to explain the layout and mechanics, which would help, though still not solve all the problems.
If someone is blind and has a blog, in my experience, 90% of them use WordPress because it's very friendly to them when they want to write. It's not a fair comparison, as TinyMCE merely is a glorified text-field, but that's also one of the old selling points of WordPress -- super simple out of the box.
It's my understanding that a lot of the preliminary design for Gutenberg was behind closed doors inside of Automattic, before publicly being brought out to the public and collaboration ensued. I don't believe there is anything wrong with this, as it happens within many FLOSS projects by corporate interests that rely on the platform. I do though wish that in the initial design phase, accessibility was a goal, not an afterthought. It may have been a goal too, not denying that, but there might have been a lack of expertise in regards to how to make interfaces fully accessible.
I don't mean to attack the editor, Automattic, or you about this. I know you've heard a lot about it. I love the block editor; it's such a pleasant experience for me to use. I worry that people though who aren't as able-bodied as I won't feel the same though.
I do believe in WordPress.org, and I love Automattic as a company and their stance in regards to the open web. I like that Automattic is a company built on my personal-favorite legal document, the GNU GPL. I'm looking forward to the day that the block editor is accessible, as it's not now. I do believe it will be. I only wish there was a stronger push before :)
Accessibility has been thought about from the beginning, and no design happened behind closed doors (it was kicked off and announced at WCUS 2016), but we are doing a fundamentally more complex task with block manipulation.
I'm not sure what the best path forward is there. We'll continue to make the block editor friendlier to accommodate accessibility needs, and I also think it's important that WordPress has a variety of ways to post to it, from email, to other apps, to the command line... by supporting as we always have a ton of ways to get content in and out of WordPress it'll allow people to use the interface they enjoy the most.
A big advantage of blocks is they will allow us to simplify many of the different concepts and interfaces throughout WordPress, including our old WYSIWYG sorta-blocks, shortcodes, widgets, menus, and embeds of all types. It solves literally hundreds of interactions where people used to get stuck in our old WYSIWYG and either switch to code view to fix things, or just give up. Like all software, the 5.0 release of WordPress isn't a finish line, it's a starting one. We are already planning for 5.1 and beyond (including minimum PHP updates) and we look forward to bringing the fast, public iteration cycle that Gutenberg has demonstrated to more parts of core.