I don’t know about you, but I’m a chronic New Year’s over-planner. I love the chance to set myself some goals that I’ll grow to hate and eventually ignore. This year, I’m trying very hard to boost my personal writing/blogging habit (along with the usual “more exercise, less food and twitter”). 

That means I’m coming out of the gate this year with a lot of content. Will it last? Time can only tell.

My Recent Writing

 Blog Posts vs Articles  What’s the difference between a blog post and an article?

 What’s the point of Twitter?  I’m reevaluating my relationship with Twitter and with social media in general.

 There’s too much code  With AI tools like Github Copilot on the rise, I have some concern about the sheer amount of code we’re dealing with in our jobs today.

As you can tell, I’ve had AI on the brain recently. Over at MasterWP, I wrote more broadly about using Github Copilot, especially as a WordPress developer.

 🔗 MasterWP: Getting Cozy with GitHub Copilot  Github Copilot is definitely good – but is it “good”? And how does it fare for WordPress developers?

There’s Gold in Them There Blogs

Speaking of MasterWP… There’s a great MWP article on this whole “WordPress Gold Rush” concept that I really recommend reading. But first, I’d start with Justin Ferriman’s piece  WordPress Gold Rush?  – I think he does a great job of presenting the affirmative argument for an upcoming WordPress gold rush. On MasterWP, Rob does a great job making  The case against a WordPress ‘gold rush’ . 

I tend to fall on the ‘no gold rush’ side of the argument. To me, blocks are NOT plugins. Plugins completely repaint and rebrand the WordPress experience. The best plugins create their own ecosystems (WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, Elementor). You know you’re using them, sometimes even moreso than you realize you’re still in WordPress. On the other hand, blocks are just blocks. They’re tiny. They live in little pockets of the editor. 

I could see the argument for a new wave of block-ecosystems (like Kadence) but at the end of the day, everyone (except for Justin) seems to be crying “gold rush” from the safety of a job at Automattic or a hosting company. I’ll be more convinced when I see them starting the new Genesis or iThemes.

A few quick links before I go

• DocPop from WP Engine did  a great recap  of Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word on the Press this Podcast.
• A good  interview on The Markup  around encryption and privacy from someome formerly at Google, now at Signal.
•  Post Status spoke to Matthias Pfefferle  about his Activity Pub plugin that brings your WordPress site into the Fediverse. If that previous sentence confused you, this is probably the episode for you.
• One of my favorite YouTubers,  The Nerdwriter, takes on ChatGPT , with a focus on it’s disruption of the “five paragraph essay”.
•  Seth Godin also talks about AI  and makes the argument that all art is fair game to be copied and imitated. Not sure I agree.
• My friend Aurooba Ahmed has a new podcast:  The Daily 5 with Aurooba . Her committing to a daily podcast (even weekends!) is giving ME anxiety.
• And speaking of anxiety, KQED talks about one of my pet topics-  more childhood independence leads to better mental health .

That’s all for now. Have a great week and reach out here or on the fediverse (or Twitter) to talk about all things WordPress.