In reply to Weston Ruter.

@Weston Ruter,

Thank you for taking the time to respond at such length.

I understand the challenges involved in developing a usable front-end editor, but I don't think you've justified the Customizer as the best means of working out how to address them. It just happens to be what's there, which isn't much of a reason at all.

To me, the most interesting thing you said was embodied by your last sentence:

We’re working on the foundational pieces for content editing in the Customizer with the goal of using them to power front-end editing as you are longing for.

If that was how the Customizer project had been presented from the start, it would have made so much more sense. But if it had been seen from the start as really just a means to an end, it wouldn't have been forced into core, and we wouldn't have to install a plugin to turn the whole thing off.

So I'm not clear whether you have always viewed the Customizer project as a means to an end or are simply trying to provide a new justification for it after the fact. Either way, I wish I believed that others working on the Customizer take the same view as you apparently do. If not, then I will continue to write off the Customizer as a waste of time.