Re: New Package for NonGNU-ELPA: clojure-ts-mode

[Ahmed Khanzada]

I am a 34 year old hacker that grew up with web browsers and GitHub. I
contribute to a number of GPL packages on GitHub. Only recently I have
managed to switch over to a comfortable mailing list workflow. Some
thoughts on the learning curve involved there:

- Younger users are used to the mouse-centric UI conventions of web
  apps. Once I was mentoring a young student, and they decided to use
  terminal vim because that's what the cool kids do, and they then asked
  me why their mouse wasn't working.

- A new mailing list user might try to use a webmail client, which does
  not thread appropriately, and which primarily deals with HTML
  email. Using a client that does not thread properly makes using
  mailing lists impossible.

- A new mailing list user might try to use a corporate email server,
  which fights against their use of traditional open protocols like
  IMAP. They end up fighting their corporate mail provider for days.

Ultimately, what made mailing lists working for me was the following:

- Setting up my own email server on OpenBSD so that I could use my email 
  account in whatever matter I chose.

- Setting up OfflineIMAP which would grab email from my OpenBSD server,
  and convert it to the Maildir format locally.

- Tagging Maildir email with notmuch so everything was filtered into
  well-sized readable folders.

- Using Gnus which displays threads wonderfully, and lets you run
  through email with a few keystrokes.

After all that, I can now see the superiority of a mailing list workflow
over the clumsy PR workflows of the forges, although I miss the "social
network" aspect of GitHub that lets you follow your favorite developers
and see what they are up to.

I have been playing with the idea that I should make a simple program
that will:

- Register you with an email service that has a long track record of
  being friendly

- Ask what mailing lists you are interested in signing up for and
  registering you with them

- Asking some remaining questions so that it can setup OfflineIMAP,
  Notmuch, Emacs, and Gnus appropriately for you

I think rather than creating a web frontend that none of us will use,
maybe we should make our advanced Emacs+Gnus workflows more
accessible. But that might also be exactly the wrong move. :)