Vision and Philosophy

[adamziel]

WordPress Playground Vision and Philosophy

This issue exists to communicate the vision and philosophy of the WordPress Playground project and keep it open for comments and discussions. These items are not set in stone. Your feedback and contributions are crucial to help shape the direction.

This issue opens the topic of Playground vision. The ongoing issue #473 is meant to re-focus the project on the direction outlined below. Additional more communication related to the long-term success of the project will follow soon.

Vision

WordPress Playground exists to make WordPress instantly accessible for users, learners, extenders, and contributors by building foundational software tools developers can use to create interactive, zero-setup, JavaScript applications with WordPress.

More specifically, here is a preliminary outline of the areas Playground will focus on.

Learning WordPress Through Exploration

Playground aims to shift the WordPress learning journey from following screenshots and videos into engaging with a live site where it's safe and easy to creatively explore the concepts being taught.

Imagine live Playgrounds that guide users through building their first website, customizing a theme, or setting up an e-commerce store. Furthermore, users would have the freedom to take a detour and explore on their own. The goal is to not to create specific tutorials or apps, but rather to empower developers with the tools necessary to build them.

Key features include support for pre-defining an initial site setup and the ability to provide step-by-step interactive instructions.

Learning WordPress Development Through Writing Code

Playground aims to encourage and accelerate learning WordPress development.

Imagine an in-browser code editor with an instant preview of everything you build. New developers would be guided through building their first WordPress extensions, and experienced developers would hone their WordPress skills with live code snippets and interactive examples embedded in the documentation and tutorials. Furthermore, developers would be able to start developing locally with zero or almost zero setup steps.

The goal is not to build such a full-featured code editor in Playground, but rather to provide the tools necessary to build one.

Key features include running PHP code in Playground, an abstraction for synchronizing files with a Playground instance, and a PHP binary that supports CLI tools like wp-cli or phpunit.

Instant access to WordPress ecosystem

Playground aims to empower developers to build WordPress applications that are available in an instant and without any server infrastructure.

WordPress ecosystem consists of many powerful extensions that could become accessible without any pre-requisites. Imagine using WordPress as a notes app, getting acquainted with plugins and themes through official live demos, or starting a full-featured development environment with a single-click. The goal is not to build such applications, but to empower the ecosystem to make them available on demand.

Key features include abstraction for integrating a custom filesystems, in-browser support for network requests, and the ability to use and configure specific PHP extensions.

Project philosophy

Focused Framework over Alluring Add-ons

Playground focuses on the minimum work required to fulfill its vision. Therefore, new features are evaluated based on the following question: Does it bring the project closer to its vision in the long run?

Every new feature, no matter how great, makes the codebase a little bit more difficult to approach and adds a little extra time to weekly maintenance. Saying yes to an appealing feature is tempting, but it means saying no to something else. Saying no is difficult, but it makes space for what's indispensable.

Therefore, Playground makes the difficult decision and chooses to focus on its vision – even when that means saying no.

Diligent Design over Quick Quirkiness

Let the long-term success of the project lead the solutions. Some changes can be done quickly, other require more time. Move as fast as the problem allows, but no faster. Move as slow as the problem requires, but not slower.

• Playground changes affect diverse browser, server, and desktop applications. This project therefore applies more caution when considering the impact a given pull request might have on the various downstream applications using the library.
• Framework features tend to be difficult to remove. This project therefore delays introducing new features until it's clear there's no existing way to accomplish some goal.
• Feedback is the single best way to make better software and better decisions. Therefore, even if you have doubts about whether a feature belongs, please share your requests so that your needs can help shape the project.

Developers are under all sorts of time pressures so let's be kind to our future selves. An hour of diligence today saves ten hours of maintenance tomorrow.

Modular Minimalism over Coupled Complexity

WordPress Playground follows the Unix philosophy:

• Each unit of code should perform one task well. To perform a new task, build afresh rather than adding more features.
• Expect the output of every function to become the input to another, as yet unknown, function. Only return what's necessary and avoid extraneous information.
• Field-test new code early and only make it a public API if it stands. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
• Favor small, focused tools over large libraries, even if it means building them from scratch. Only integrate those libraries that are absolutely necessary.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Let's aim for this kind of perfection.

[flexseth]

@adamziel adding this to the docs info