A Look into Calypso, a talk by Matías Ventura at WordCamp Europe 2016, is an engaging survey of the open source technology running the new WordPress.com publishing interface. Why it’s important, what it’s made of, the values and principles that guide it, and how to use it today for your own projects.
The introduction of Calypso has brought the notion of a modern JavaScript approach to the front and center of the WordPress community. What does an admin UI built entirely in JavaScript (with technologies like React that have taken the JavaScript community by storm) mean for WordPress and how we think of JavaScript in the project?
Matías ends with a challenge to everyone wanting to contribute to advancing JavaScript in WordPress; I won’t spoil it, watch the video to see the call to action.
Links and resources mentioned in the video below. You can also download the slides (PDF, 10.4 MB).
- Calypso GitHub repository
- WP.com REST API
- WP-API
- React JS library
- wpcom.js, official JavaScript library for the WordPress.com REST API
- webpack, a module bundler
- Sass, CSS with superpowers
- page.js, a client-side router
- Redux, a state container for JS apps
- socket.io, a real-time engine
- Babel, a JavaScript compiler
- Calypso documentation (aka DevDocs)
- Live gallery of Calypso Components
- “Our Approach to Data” article
- “Introduce AsyncLoad for asynchronous rendering by code splitting”
The Sensible Leader 
Since Matías doesn’t have comments enabled on his blog, I thought I’d thank him here, and ask a follow-up question.
You mentioned “abstractions lead to burdens of knowledge” in the context of being careful about generalizing code into tools. Can you expand on that a bit? Maybe with a new blog post on matiasventura.com?
I’d like to learn more about the burden, how it plays out for any open source project (not just WordPress or Calypso). This could be a good (cough) general lesson for anyone running an open code project.
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