I used to feel apprehensive about emailing people until one day I just decided to power through and do it. I agree with the post, it's like you unlock an additional layer of communications. Everyone is suddenly contactable! I would also say that most poeple are really nice 1-1, I cannot remember a nasty reply (worst that happened to me was just my email being left ignored).
I would add that I love emails when they are written as emails (i.e. at least one coherent paragraph).
Email, as a medium, prompts us to think (at least for a few seconds), not "generate human tokens". Sure, we may feel being "communicative" or "productive" while chatting or Slack, but (in my experience) it is not always the case.
I love the idea of emailing people with appreciation for things they've created.
I've considered doing this a few times, but have to admit I've never actually got round to sending people appreciative emails, maybe this blog post is the prompt I need.
There's a lot of makers on HN, has anyone here ever received emails about things they made?
I used to be fairly active on r/generative, someone once DM'd me to show me a pen-plot they'd made based off of something I'd made, and it made my whole week.
It feels somewhat hacked together (because, largely, it is); and there are significantly more bots than people using it (which is somewhat self-fulfilling).
But when I read the leaked/disclosed emails from founders during tech's boom in the late 00-s and early 10-s, I'm left feeling like: this is kinda nice.
You don't need to write long prose, email chains are reasonably self-contained, can include practically anyone and since nobody seems to have a total dominance on mail clients; they pretty much stick to the lowest common denominator. (though, HTML seems to be very much accepted behaviour for email clients, even though it was NOT when I grew up).
So, in the end, it's the safest medium to reach the most people, and incidentally it's also the most "comfy" in that I can optimise my own experience of email if I want to. Nobody cares if you use outlook/gmail/thunderbird/mutt or whatever. It's just email.
This is a pretty strong contrast to the modern web which pretty much requires Chrome or modern messengers which require/enforce their own first-party clients. Even if they happen to support federation (like Teams) which isn't a given.
I used to feel apprehensive about emailing people until one day I just decided to power through and do it. I agree with the post, it's like you unlock an additional layer of communications. Everyone is suddenly contactable! I would also say that most poeple are really nice 1-1, I cannot remember a nasty reply (worst that happened to me was just my email being left ignored).
I emailed Ken Thompson and Noam Chomsky in the past, and they replied! It probably wouldn’t work any other way.
I would add that I love emails when they are written as emails (i.e. at least one coherent paragraph).
Email, as a medium, prompts us to think (at least for a few seconds), not "generate human tokens". Sure, we may feel being "communicative" or "productive" while chatting or Slack, but (in my experience) it is not always the case.
I love the idea of emailing people with appreciation for things they've created.
I've considered doing this a few times, but have to admit I've never actually got round to sending people appreciative emails, maybe this blog post is the prompt I need.
There's a lot of makers on HN, has anyone here ever received emails about things they made?
I used to be fairly active on r/generative, someone once DM'd me to show me a pen-plot they'd made based off of something I'd made, and it made my whole week.
Email as a technology is insanely crufty.
It feels somewhat hacked together (because, largely, it is); and there are significantly more bots than people using it (which is somewhat self-fulfilling).
But when I read the leaked/disclosed emails from founders during tech's boom in the late 00-s and early 10-s, I'm left feeling like: this is kinda nice.
You don't need to write long prose, email chains are reasonably self-contained, can include practically anyone and since nobody seems to have a total dominance on mail clients; they pretty much stick to the lowest common denominator. (though, HTML seems to be very much accepted behaviour for email clients, even though it was NOT when I grew up).
So, in the end, it's the safest medium to reach the most people, and incidentally it's also the most "comfy" in that I can optimise my own experience of email if I want to. Nobody cares if you use outlook/gmail/thunderbird/mutt or whatever. It's just email.
This is a pretty strong contrast to the modern web which pretty much requires Chrome or modern messengers which require/enforce their own first-party clients. Even if they happen to support federation (like Teams) which isn't a given.
The best thing to come out of the internet!