I want to talk to you 🫵

I want to talk to interesting people (like you).

I want to engage in good conversations on topics that interest me.

I want to read about and discuss software development and subjects such as software design, functional programming, testing, abstractions, and refactoring. Related to that, I also want to talk about meta-subjects such as principles, learning, and simplicity.

I just don’t know where to do it.

Where to go? #

I use Mastodon as my preferred social media for such topics. But it is hard to find a good signal to noise ratio. And it is difficult to follow just the things I’m interested in, without having US politics or other hot topics coming along.¹

I sometimes use LinkedIn for discussion as well, though the real discussion tend to drown in not-so-humble bragging and people who have much too high opinions of their own competence.

I follow Hacker News and think it is a good source for finding interesting articles. I rarely find myself commenting there however. Since everyone is commenting on same “few” articles, it feels more like shouting to passers-by in the middle of a busy square than an intimate conversation with a good friend.

I follow a lot of blogs. And while the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty good and it is reasonably easy to discover new blogs, it is often hard to reply. Most commenting tools for blogs are annoying to use, not to mention privacy nightmares. Many sites (my own included) have no way of commenting. I sometimes use my own blog to publish a reply², but that often feels too heavy-handed. Many times, I just want to signal to the author that I appreciated the post, or type a quick reply which may not be of interest to everyone else.

I know there have been attempts to solve the blog-reply situation. Most recently, webmentions used in the IndieWeb movement. I like the idea, but they don’t really play well with the idea of a static web site (such as mine). Not to mention that they don’t enjoy very wide adoption.

Finding a better way #

I sometimes think that I should embrace the “slowness” and “distance” that comes with discussing over separate blogs. In my mind, I picture myself as a 19th century gentleman sitting by their desk, quill in hand. But it leads to a flow where only the most significant ideas are written. And I think the blogosphere (does anyone use that phrase anymore?) needs to lower barriers of communication, rather than the opposite.

I should perhaps embrace e-mail. It is pretty universal and mostly just works. But that will mostly limit the conversation to two people. I would like to find a balance between fully private and shouting from the rooftops.³

I dream of something that allows for conversations, but which is as simple as RSS. Something which anyone can implement and “just works”, without selling your privacy to someone’s “1342 valued partners”. I can only hope that we can come up with something in the future.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I do however welcome thoughts and suggestions to this post, through whatever channel they may reach me. 😊