On Tuesday, May 8, 2018, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:06 PM, <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > As an aside: If you were active on Usenet in 1989, what software were you using?
>
> rn

trn.  I *still* use it for the count-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand newgroups
that I follow.

I also still use trn for the small number of groups that I can bring myself to still read semi-regularly.

I was lamenting the (asymptotic) death of usenet to a colleague the other day and asked, "where are all the cool kids these days?" I was only half joking: back when news was the main nexus of interaction for technical communities, it really was where you'd go to find things out and where you could reasonably expect to interact with experts. For example, occasionally the likes of Dennis Ritchie would even post in comp.lang.c; Ken Thompson's MiG-29 flight story posted to rec.aviation is a classic. But those days are long gone, so where do technical communities communicate electronically?

The answer could be as simple as -- you are using one such medium at this very moment.  I honestly believe technical mailing lists are the last bastion of information exchange in the way most of us still remember.  Although I am writing this on an iPhone (and it really sucks for writing) I still love to read/write emails on an old school DEC terminal or DOS era VGA monitor.

All those new fads like reddit or web based forums just don't feel "right" to me.

--Andy