In reply to David McCan.

Learning through reading the code is harder now because the code has gone through a build process.

I had this in my notes but forgot to put it in the post. One of the major reasons it's harder is because so many plugin authors do not provide their source code along with their build/production code. And, if it's not publicly available on GitHub or similar, it's impossible to study it.

This is one area that I wish the plugin directory would follow the theme directory rules. All minified/compiled code should include the original source.

ACF, Meta Box and other plugins have shown that it is possible to support creating Gutenberg blocks using PHP. If we want to reduce the barrier to entry that would be a good place to start. Any reason why that isn't supported in core?

I haven't tried these out in the while, but the last time I used a project with ACF Pro, it was a pretty terrible user experience because it relied on server-side rendering, needing to refresh the block content instead of a JS-based live preview. I am not sure if that is still true today.

But, core WP basically does do this. SSR blocks are the easiest to build, which I believe ACF builds upon. It's just the edit part (assuming there are block options) needs to be coded in JS. This is a really good jumping-in point if you want to transition something like an old shortcode or widget to a block.

By the way, congrats on being able to create your first block in a few hours. I believe that is exceptional, not normal. I've seen several professional theme developers say they studied hard for about a week before making their first block, although perhaps you and they were approaching it differently.

Everyone learns at their own pace. I know others who pick up things much faster than I do. My approach is more just diving in headfirst. Then, study when I hit a problem.