2022 Blockly Developers Summit: Block Definitions - Past, Present, and Future

A Google TechTalk, presented by Christopher Allen, 2022/05/03.
ABSTRACT: This talk details how blocks have historically been defined, how they are defined today, and previews the anticipated future roadmap. We pose some questions about the future of block definitions which we hope to get developer feedback on.

About the presenter: Christopher Allen is a software engineer at Google. Christopher recently joined the Blockly team to work on modernising the Blockly codebase. Previously, he developed Code City, a Google platform for teaching advanced software engineering skills through undirected play. This work has given him a deep knowledge of the ECMAScript specification and server-side JS; he looks forward with not inconsiderable trepidation to learning more about client-side JS the DOM.

[jamescat]

yeah good, anything that makes it clearer where the default blocks are coming from and how to manage them, even if it is just some utility functions, deleteAll(), delete(specific_block) along with add(). I co-locate my block definitions and generators, makes sense to keep the generators with the blocks, what use are the generators without the blocks? an idea might be to provide a simple installer, or seperate packages for people who are wanting to start with the default blocks/generators and aren't necessarily comfortable with dealing with multiple repos

[kikiboom]

new blockly option form 5 july 2024 is version: '',
summer 2011 theme version: '2011',
march 2012 version: '2012',
oct 2013 version: '2013',