Re: IM dev discussions?

[Tim Cross]

Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

> Of course, time and skills (and other psychological traits) are the
> main parameters deciding whether someone can participate to these
> discussions: but the more they take place on the mailing list, the
> more inclusive they are IMHO.
>
> (I know this opinion is debatable: most <30yo (<35yo) hackers out
> there will say that relying on a mailing list for such discussions
> wards them off, insisting we should go on GitHub... but *anyone* can
> send an email to a list, while only registered GitHub users can open
> an issue. We certainly don't want to encourage anyone to register on
> GitHub.)

I observe the same behaviour. My kids (27, 24) both have email accounts,
but only have them and use them for places which insist on an email
address (like government services, universities etc). They use email
only when they have to and check it only when they are expecting a
message. For them, it is IM services (even there, the ones used will
also depend on your age within the <30 - seems to be a trend from FB
messenger, snapchat, discord, whatsapp, tiktok - and even there FB
messenger is probably just to IM with their parents!). From their
perspective, FB is what their parents use and email is what their
grandparents use! No way will they use a mail list.

Of course there are exceptions. You will likely find more young people
who use Emacs and org will also use email more, but I don't know if that
is because the types of people attracted to Emacs and org mode are also
the types of people more attracted to email for comms.

These days, when I want interactive chat, I actually prefer to go with
real chat rather than text based chat. There are so many choices for
voice chat these days, you may as well have real interaction and just
talk! This is where the technology really blows my mind now. A little
while ago, I was collaborating with someone where we were talking using
a voice chat app. It was a bug squashing collaboration where we worked
through a bunch of bugs together and got a heap fixed in a 2 hours
intensive session. I was in Australia and they were in South America AND
travelling on a bus! While there was a couple of instances where we lost
voice comms briefly, it was remarkably successful and it still blows my
mind that I was live coding with someone half way around the world,
travelling on a bus while we coded and chatted in real time! 30 years
ago, we would both need to be in stable locations with land-lines and
IRC would be the most interaction we could hope for - voice definitely
not!