Yep, at least for charcoal, new material slabs, faster gold tools, cookies, bones, sandstone, increase tool durability, different texture trees, etc.
Are elements that already exist in the game and, if they are not able, in this moment of the development, to add new materials, add new receipts and assign textures to objects and blocks in a few minutes (even without messing in code, modifying some variables in a text editor), the structure of the project has to be really messy.
Also, things like not falling in stairs if sneaking is something that requires two lines of code. Literally.
And I think that is the kind of things that they should promote, right now. Instead of occlusion light, that is something that costed more, they could spend a week to spend the first two days looking what kind of new blocks, new receipts, new objects can they add, and the other three days of the week in implement all that stuff that is really easy to do because is based in existant behaviours.
That will create a lot of new gameplay options, make a great update that will keep happy everyone, and give use to a lot of items, like gold or lapiz lazuli that now are nearly useless. And in a single week.
It give the impression that they want to go for the exciting stuff that everyone love to program (tameable animals, original archievements like pig riding), but they don't like very much to do the "mechanical" work of creating new elements, new receipts, furnitures, etc.