The way Mojang has been handling releases as of late is pretty much the worst case scenario for modding IMO

Long streches between updates that add substantive content to the game? Great! This gives modders time to build up a rich body of mods like the 1.12 scene.

Short streches between updates that have meaningful additions? Cool! Modders will have a tougher time jumping between versions or getting left behind on older ones, but interesting content makes it an okay tradeoff.

Stop official updates altogether? Fine! The community can coalesce around one definitive version and do incredible things knowing they've got all the time in the world to dig into the code.

What we have right now are somewhat frequent updates that add random doodads with next to no interaction with the core gameplay, and in exchange the mod community is constantly fractured when developers jump ship to the new version

"Oh boy! Clay pots!" Said no one in the world's history.