This document discusses blocks and layouts in Drupal and compares approaches between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8. It outlines some of the challenges with blocks in Drupal 7 like managing blocks at admin/structure/block. It then covers composition patterns in Drupal 7 like custom blocks, contextual views, and Panels. The document dives into Context, Display Suite and Panels modules as layout solutions and compares their approaches. It highlights new block capabilities in Drupal 8 like blocks being plugins and having custom block types, fields, and view modes.