On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:06 PM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy <lm(a)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?
I'm told Reddit is the new hotness, but it's just not the same (if for no
other reason than that it's totally centralized under the control of a
single corporate organization).
- Dan C.