I didn’t see where they said they just began the main programming on it. All I saw was James say this:
To me, saying that the first step towards the next big update is releasing the regen tech, means that it’s already being worked on. And seeing the post from @lucadeltodecso sort of shows that this is maybe in the final stages of development. Still, the point stands that there’s no timeline on the release of the tech 
Things can and will change, so any guesses at this point are just speculation 