What do y'all think about mailing lists and IRC as sole communication channels?

onlinepersona@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 54 points –

Say you want to contribute to a project and find out the only way to do so is by discussing the issue on IRC or the mailing list, then submitting the patch per email.

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I spent a lot of time and energy doing that years ago and don't want to do it anymore. Mailing lists suck because you're subscribed to a billion things you don't want to hear about. IRC...honestly...the world has just moved past it.

I’m sad the world moved past IRC. It was always chock full of tech geniuses and underground nerd shit. The normies can have discord

I’m still amazed that people consider proprietary app Discord the successor to IRC

I’m surprised discord is so commonly used with such a horribly unintuitive UX. I can’t recall all my problems with it, but I remember absolutely hating using it at first, as a person with early adopter tendencies.

This is my sentiment too and I asked the question because I was surprised that some new projects were actually being started with exactly these 2 dinosaurs. It felt offputting - as if they were trying to keep people away.

Lemmy doesn't support questionnaires, but it wouldn't surprise me if the majority of those who like those 2 technologies were 40+, maybe even 50+.

it wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of those who like those 2 technologies were 40+, maybe even 50+.

I don't think it should surprise anyone if people with more experience and skills are more comfortable with simple tools than the rest of us. They've had more time to find good workflows for those tools, after all.

It might be more interesting to ask why people prefer any one comms method over another. For example, do they like irc/email because they're old dogs who can't learn new tricks, or because those are open systems that can't be taken over by some greedy corporation?

more comfortable with simple tools than the rest of us

That really depends on your definition of "simple". Swimming across a river is simple, but hard. All you need is your body. Using a boat is easy, but complicated (you need to know how to drive a boat). So yeah, it's "simple" but it's not easy, IMO.