On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:51:21AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > >Sub 30 was what I was thinking of. I'm only saying there's a bit of a >statistical tendency, not that this applies to everyone, obviously. But >when I look around at the broader development world, the majority of the >newer projects seem to not use email at all. Even when they do, it's not >where the most useful conversation happens. > >Now, in a lot of cases the real conversation happens on GitHub, which >isn't exactly the same thing as a forum. But forums seem to play a large >role in some of the more vibrant communities (Rust, for instance).
There was a good talk about this topic at FOSDEM this year: https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/nextgencontributors/ >> There is something to be said for educating "younger people" with the >> old ways -- I mean how many of these "Modern" things are just >> re-implementations of what previously existed (except with centralized >> control and "oh yeah, pay us"). > >This may be the case, but I think those of us who are familiar with email >have a bit of a tendency (I'm *definitely* including myself in this) to >jump straight to "let me explain to you how email already does everything >you want if you just use it properly" without bothering to ask people what >features they like and really listen to them. > >Professionally, I can tell you that my younger colleagues tend to hate >email and far prefer other communication mechanisms, and that's not >because they're unaware of how email is used. The most commonly stated >reason is that email is full of noise and pointless messages that aren't >worth reading, compared to other approaches. That's just anecdotes, not >data, obviously, but it made me curious to understand what I might be >missing. (My past experience is that when younger colleagues get excited >about a new way of doing things, I should pay attention, because there are >probably things that I'm missing and that I will appreciate if I look into >them more deeply.) Nod. Much as we're comfortable and happy with email, it's important to keep open-minded and be ready to evaluate other things too. Just because we happen to like it now, that doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be the best possible way to communicate *ever*. Hell, there's a strong confirmation bias here too - how many potentially great future developers have we lost at a very early stage because our email-centric workflow didn't appeal to them initially? -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. st...@einval.com You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...
