Making My Peace With Gutenberg

I’ve had somewhat of a rocky history with using Gutenberg. When it first came out it was so slow that I couldn’t even use it on the little Chromebook I had bought specifically for writing – I wound up selling the computer. Fast forward to a few months later and the performance issue and bugs pushed me off WordPress altogether.

A year later I came back to WordPress and started writing off and on with Gutenberg. While it still has some strange quirks, overall I find it to be descent writing experience.

If there is a lesson to be found in this transition it is that WordPress’ emphasis on backward compatibility and stability really isn’t as concrete as its opponents claim. Simply put, Gutenberg was released far before it was ready and it showed.

Three years after its release Gutenberg is more polished and more capable. It has the feel of a solid beta product now, a label I don’t think can honestly be applied to it upon its release.

While I don’t use it for fancy layouts or other tasks, it is, for the most part, a descent writing tool. If I had my choice I would probably still use the classic editor but doing so is a regressive policy without much of a future and I’ve made my peace with that fact.

I do realize it is still in very active development and will continue to improve. While I still have serious concerns about aspects of its architecture (that’s for another post) it is good enough for this simple site.

To those still on the fence I would say it is important to evaluate your use of the tool. If your needs are simple it is probably time to embrace the new editor (if you haven’t already).