Ask HN: Why do dev communities still use mailing lists? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do dev communities still use mailing lists?

6 pointskevinSuttle11 comments

Just wondering, as I see this all the time.

Because it's a push rather than a pull medium (you don't have to remember to check it) but asynchronous (you don't have to check it immediately). And one that everyone already has access to (you don't have to create Yet Another Account on Yet Another Service to keep up with questions, answers, and new development).

I understand what you mean and I fell the same that malling list is just not that pleasing and feels old, but nothing have solved it yet. Discourse is on the way, but still a bit difficult to host yourself and hosted to expensive.

Because mailing lists are simple and modern webapps are easy.

Because they work and have worked for ever.. same with IRC.

Also, not needing to create yet another account is a big plus

Why not GitHub issues? No this is not a satirical question.

Why not?

Because nowadays there are tools just to make sure the tools are making the tools that monitor the tools are monitoring the tools correctly.

In short: there's a web app for seemingly everything nowadays, but devs stick to mailing lists. In my opinion, mailing lists are very old school, not the easiest to wade/search through and most new programmers are baffled by them (or at least by how to post to them).

You could argue, though, that most new people just use things like StackOverflow nowadays...

most new programmers are baffled by them (or at least by how to post to them).

That may not be a bug.

Then new programmers will stick to stack overflow and the likes, and mailing lists will slowly decline. Not a bad thing in my opinion as I'm not a mailing list fan (as is obvious from my first reply).

StackOverflow is better suited to teach new programmers the ways of the world than a stable open source project with a small team of core developers volunteering their time.

To put it another way, good open source projects are good often because the team is experienced and focused.

> there's a web app for seemingly everything nowadays, but devs stick to mailing lists.

So? Some of the earliest "web apps" are web viewers for mailing lists.

> In my opinion, mailing lists are very old school, not the easiest to wade/search through

If you're a subscriber, the messages are literally delivered to your email address, you can index them however you want using whatever mailbox tech you want.

If you just want to view them casually, there are dozens of mature web based mail list browsers you can use.

> most new programmers are baffled by them (or at least by how to post to them).

If a programmer is baffled by "subscribe using form A/by sending email to <foo>; post by sending email to <bar>" then i don't really put much weight on their assessment that something is "hard to use".

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