The problem is they lost the ability to just type as if it was all one document. Paragraphs are now widgets. Instead of dragging a widget into a document and having a paragraph wrap around it, you lay them all out on equal footing.
People really do not care whether they are react components or not - but they do care if it is difficult to just type in a paragraph.
Gutenberg does have potential, but they empowered widgets while making the core act of typing up a document more difficult. If they fix that, it has potential.
People are using block editors everywhere. Campaign Monitor, Sendinblue, MailChimp, SquareSpace, Wix.
Arguing that the most popular content management platform (ever) should just stick to plain text and shortcodes is not really sustainable.
You can just type paragraphs, without any clicking. And before, you couldn't just "wrap a paragraph" around a widget, really ever; shortcodes broke stuff like that routinely.
(They are still improving cross-block text selection -- at the moment if you select from one block to another, both blocks select completely. But there's a solution to this that is very imminent)
Forgive me if my Gutenberg knowledge is outdated, but when I used it for a company blog a year or two ago, it was possible to type as if you were writing a single document. IIRC you could keep your hands on the keyboard if you used \ to start new blocks.
I also saw a lot of potential in Gutenberg’s blocks back then. It changed our blogging workflow in some very elegant ways.
People really do not care whether they are react components or not - but they do care if it is difficult to just type in a paragraph.
Gutenberg does have potential, but they empowered widgets while making the core act of typing up a document more difficult. If they fix that, it has potential.