Etch has come a long way in just a little over a year. It is a code friendly builder that combines a visual building experience with code editors. The team is now moving from development builds working towards a version 1.
A big feature of Etch is the ability to have what you create in Etch be automatically converted to blocks in the Gutenberg editor. In the alpha builds these blocks were core blocks. People who create Gutenberg blocks are aware that core Gutenberg is finicky and the news about moving the Gutenberg editor to load in an iframe is an example of how it is still a moving target. I’ve seen a number of developers give up working in the Gutenberg space until is stabilizes … and many of them are still waiting. So, the Etch team decided that it would be safer, and long term it would be more flexible and reliable, to render what you create in Etch as custom blocks (rather than as core blocks).
I am glad to see that the team has affirmed a future commitment so that Etch blocks won’t require Etch to be installed. This opens some very interesting possibilities for developers and site builders.
