I've wondered about the "difficulty" idea a lot since reading Justin's opinion piece, it's so hard to weigh up the before/after development experience vs. where someone was/now is in terms of ability and time. I do feel I've experienced more frustration than difficulty with the development cycle post-Gutenberg, and it's been an anxious few years building on top of a project that's slowly revealing its new shape.

Prior to 2019 I chatted regularly with 4 local designers/developers working with WordPress, but the last of them stopped working with it at the start of this year. A couple went off to work on pure React projects (after becoming interested via Gutenberg!), one went to more PHP-oriented work, and one embraced Squarespace/Shopify for client work. I'm adamant about sticking with WordPress in the long term and am now engaged with the open-source aspect in a way I never was previously, but my daily WordPress life has changed, for sure. Between 2012–2020 my income was 100% from WordPress-related work, primarily custom themes and small plugins. This year it's been basically zero, due to deciding to opt out until full site editing is properly in core. My brain simply started feeling too stretched between the "old" and "new".