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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> It's that we should stop using email pretty much altogether. Like I said: it's archaic

Sorry but have you ever used Signal or any other IM to send anything longer than a few sentences? Email can be as long as you want, and it is totally appropriate when you want to write a longer document.

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Have you used Signal recently? It’s quite robust IMO, from texting to calling and everything in between. My initial reaction to the GP post was not unlike yours, but as I read on I find myself agreeing with him. Going through my email records, a vast number as he said, are automated or transactional. The only real exceptions are from older relatives sending Facebook crap, or occasional indications to and from friends who don’t use messaging apps to read a particular article or study.

Worse it’s pretty much impossible to teach people don’t want to learn how to try and make email less insecure. By contrast I found it very easy to turn people onto Signal and similar applications.

Yes, I've used Signal and other messengers, including "IM's", to send things longer than a sentence. And, when I send email to people, if I have something more complicated than a paragraph or two to send, I make an actual document anyways. So what's your argument?

Here is something that I have a need of pretty often, but don't know how to do in things outside email (Whatsapp, Signal, etc): a point by point interleaving of the original message and the reply; for instance in a technical argument.

I could do this in Slack, but unlike email this is not even close to being universally supported.

For such technical discussions, I prefer an issue tracker, wiki, or forum. It should be a centralized searchable archive and not hidden in personal mailboxes.

Sure, you can use email as an interface to an issue tracker. Debian is probably the most prominent example. That is worse than anything web-based in my opinion.

That answer isn't workable for those of us in shorter term projects which lack that sort of infrastructure. The need remains for a flexible messaging system to take over for those kinds of messages that need some permanence. It sounds like what people familiar with email workflow want is the email a document interface so we have something tho point to after the fact. I don't think anything else does that though Wire may at some point.

How often do you send emails longer than a few sentences?

I don't really see a problem with long messages on Signal. The only annoyance is that the desktop clients are always browser-based (Electron or website or plugin).

> How often do you send emails longer than a few sentences?

Actually every single day, and not just once. Maybe I am an outlier?

Yes, you can write as long a message as you want with signal. There are desktop clients. You can attach files. Or voice messages. Or use it to call them. Or video chat them. It’s a crazy robust full featured incredibly secure communications system.

It's a centralized system, with a single point of failure, and you cannot use it without a phone number.

Then use Matrix or wait for Wire to open-source and federate, but securing email has failed for decades now.

> There are desktop clients

You mean the ones with Electron, using 5% of your CPU idle, requiring you to have first registered your smartphone with it before it can even work? That's not what I call a functional desktop client.

I don’t know a single person who uses the desktop client, and there’s the rub: it’s fine if I can perfectly render a 1000 word essay on my huge monitor, but not one of my friends will want to read it on their mobile screen.

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