Who needs newfangled stuff like forums? 🤢

2 years ago by onlinepersona to c/programmer_humor

Inspired by How to effectively browse mailing lists.

themoken 33 points 2 years ago

I wouldn't do a mailing list these days, but as someone who spent the early part of my career interacting with devs that preferred this method, it's actually pretty ergonomic by a 2005 standard. A message thread aware, text based email client that can turn messages into patches in a keystroke makes it actually pretty comparable to modern code review...

I think it's hard for younger devs to get this because they're used to email being stuck in a crappy, unthreaded browser interface or Outlook etc. (which are terrible for mailing lists) and most collaboration taking place in code review and chat platforms like Teams/Slack but for decades before these were feasible, email was the way...

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marcos 12 points 2 years ago

It certainly beats Teams, Slack, or Discord. For a start, you have control over the messages and can actually search on them.

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MonkderVierte 0 points 2 years ago

Matrix?

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Routhinator 10 points 2 years ago

I'll note that a number of groups and forums send mailing list like emails (google groups, django dev being a big one) and that notifications can be threaded from places like Github with the right client.

Thunderbird has good threading.

Roundcube webmail is also capable here. Though when I have had it working it didn't include sent messages... which is not great in my mind.

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ryannathans 9 points 2 years ago

What clients are good for mailing lists?

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Routhinator 15 points 2 years ago

Thunderbird has good features for mailing lists and threads.

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themoken 6 points 2 years ago

I used mutt back in the day, opening vim for message editing.

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fu 13 points 2 years ago

We recently had a guy try to get our local GNU/Linux User Group to move our communication to Discord because he found email too difficult.

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onlinepersona 9 points 2 years ago

That's most definitely the wrong tool (discord is not for async) and the other end of the spectrum. Or did you maybe misunderstand him saying "discourse"? That would make much more sense as a mailing list replacement.

Or they were straight up meme'ing.

Anti Commercial-AI license

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fu 3 points 2 years ago

@onlinepersona no, it was definitely Discord, and he definitely was of the opinion that it was easier to find old discussions in Discord than email.

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fu -1 points 2 years ago

@onlinepersona I will admit that the search feature in GNU Mailman could use an upgrade on its archive search.

I actually get all of my mail list posts right here in Friendica as I use kill-the-newsletter to subscribe and "friend" the RSS so post just show in my social media feed the same as Mastodon Toots and Lemmy Posts, so they don't overcrowd my email inbox.

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