Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Imran Iqbal <imran@imraniqbal.org>]

On Sun, Sep 03, 2023 at 05:45:41PM +0000, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote:
> I use protonmail and they don't provide smtp access so I can't do git
> send-mail as easy as other people do.

A mail provider not allowing SMTP is a git forge that does not allow git
push.
> This is not Guix's fault, but it's a problem Guix doesn't help fix either.

This is not on guix to fix, this in you with your choice of mail
provider.

> This doesn't mean I'm against the email based approach, in fact, I really
> like it. The main problem I see is many people inside guix are not
> sensible to people's problems and tastes.

The problem is people's tastes are "we need to use the web browser for
everything" which is what computers have become in a advertising and VC
funded world. We should not be forcing that on people.

> Some people are forced to use tools for several reasons, too.

But text editing and email the two things which there are a plethora of
tools, and it's very hard to imagine a scenario where someone is forced
into using one.

> This is what I mean when I say many times emacs is kind of mandatory, and
> this thread is kind of a demonstration of what I meant because the main
> discussion evolved to: you can use this or that in emacs to ease the dev
> experience.

This is because emacs is a lisp machine that just happens to let you
edit text. If you are working in a lisp-y language, emacs provides the
best development experience. Emacs also lets you hand mail inside of
emacs (among many many other things). This does not mean you are forced
to use emacs. I use neovim and neomutt for my needs.

> I don't think software we use is the main problem, but the fact that we
> are not always sensible with other people's experience.

Imagine a different scenario, where instead of this being about email it
was around guile. Would it be fair to say that a Guix makes it hard
to contribute by choosing to be implemented in guile? And that Guix
should move towards using another language that more people are familiar
with like python or javascript?

Personally I don't think its fair to ask Guix to move away from emails
because folks are more familiar with using web browsers for everything.