Most weeks of development are pretty predictable with work that is isn’t boring but is not very challenging. But this week had some big walls to push through, as I learned how Gutenberg, React, WordPress, and our custom code all work together. I could spend a few hours figuring something out or even a day without making much progress. But when I finally solved the problem and got something working as expected it felt like such a relief. If there was someone else to hug or high five or cheers to in my office I totally would have. The upside to doing something that challenges and stretches me is that it makes the day go by much faster. I am a lot more likely to be distracted by something other than code if the work is boring or too easy.
The big project™
I spent the first half of the week working on a new format type for the Gutenberg editor but got to a point where things were not progressing, so I took a break to allow other more experienced Gutenberg developers a chance to contribute. I then took on creating a very simple Gutenberg block that essentially is a paragraph block with a specific heading added. Finishing that first block in only a few hours gave me a sense of accomplishment before I took on starting development on a more complex block. The new block has a lot of elements to it including custom settings, repeatable groups of fields, apiFetch calls to the database, reordering of posts, dynamic block rendering, and autocomplete style input fields. The block borrows some code structure from the core gallery block and WooCommerce blocks that provide some similar functionality.
TFC
Teach for Canada’s big day is coming up next week, when the service opens to teachers and community members, so there was a bunch of small fixes and bugs that needed to be handled. I also needed to make sure everyone had their accounts set up with the proper access.
I also moved them from Teamwork over to ClickUp this week. They had a few new staff members who wanted access to our project management tools, so it seemed like the perfect time to make the switch. It did take some time to move my tasks over for various client projects, but clicking the downgrade button on my Teamwork account made it all worth it.
Wrapping up
I wasn’t able to fit in much other work this week but did do some plugin updates and a few small fixes for Qpractice. I also lined up some new work for ISSofBC that will hopefully be handled by a subcontractor. Next week is more Gutenberg and hopefully finally getting some work done for Arc Insurance’s XML sending tool.