Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're twisting the problem statement a little here.

Asking "How do I unsend an email" is just as unreasonable as asking "Hey, give me that gift I gave you back".

The problem is that, regardless of your intent, you've given something to someone and they own it now.

You can't undo that without involving the 3rd party (Or breaking the law and stealing it, digitally for the email).

And I want to be clear upfront - THIS IS A GOOD THING.

I don't want Amazon to be able to "unsend" my receipts. I don't want Google to be able to "unsend" my support chat log. I don't want my boss to be able to "unsend" his approval for my time off.

This system is designed explicitly to put the USER first. But it treats each side of the exchange as user, and values them equally - If they disagree, it's not the system's job to resolve that, they have to talk it out.

Slack and Messenger (and a lot of other modern chat) have an arbiter - They don't require users to agree because they own the content, not the users. In a company slack, I haven't given you anything when I message you. I've just pinned something to the company message board. I can take it down, and so can anyone else who has the key. It's not mine and it's not yours - It is very clearly owned by the company.

That can work great in a well structured environment, but I have to laugh when you say its replacing email. It's not a replacement, it's a complement - They are not the same things.

Just like an oral promise with no witnesses is NOT the same as a signed receipt. Use each as needed.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. The point of version control systems is to make developing software easier. It's a tool that exists for the convenience of its users. It's reasonable for people developing software to ask for the ability undo a change or restore a repository to the way it was a second ago. Telling a team of people using Git "it doesn't work like that" is unhelpful because it's not impossible for a version control system to work like that and the point of any software is to help them do what they're trying to do.

This doesn't mean that Git has to accept any feature under the sun and it might be that Git isn't most appropriate tool for teams that want such a feature. But there's nothing holy or fundamental about an implementation detail of how Git does things that makes their use-case hard.

VCS exist to make it possible to organize and track changes to project source code. Convenience of the user is a secondary goal to clear organization and code management.

A VCS shouldn't be unnecessarily difficult to use, but the fact that this conversation around Git's UX is endlessly rehashed is proof that version control is a hard problem.

If there was an easy and obvious 10x improvement over Git it would have replaced Git by now. Or to put it differently, when someone makes an easy 10x improvement over Git, it will see widespread adoption.

I don't think that last bit is necessarily true. Git has strong network effects, and people are generally very conservative about tools like source control. Git also has the benefit that there are a lot of people used to its quirks, and that skill investment makes them feel fond of it.

The same was true with the switch to WYSIWYG OSes and word processing tools; they were generally liked by people new to computing, but people who were steeped in the old ways, many switched only reluctantly.

The trees are brutal here. Someone pushed the code a minute ago, but I've fetched it already and now I'm editing the same source file.

If you take it away from me, or make me later inadvertently push their code, you are inconveniencing an innocent person.

> But there's nothing holy or fundamental about an implementation detail of how Git does things that makes their use-case hard.

Yes, yes there is.

I've worked in systems like you're describing (CVS, SVN) - The problem is that they ALL require locking.

Locking freaking sucks. It sucks SO INCREDIBLY MUCH more than dealing with the complexity of a real distributed system that git won, even though its cli interface is a god-damned nightmare.

You clearly haven't had a co-worker lock a file you need to edit and then go on vacation.

> I have to laugh when you say its replacing email.

Laugh all you like, but kids and the interns I've chatted with see email as something akin to how I feel about fax machines: not something they'd use by choice, but necessary for historical reasons. When I've been at organizations during a Slack adoption, email volume drops hugely; 50-80%, I'd guess. I've closed most of the mailing lists I used to run because they shifted to mediums better suited. Just this morning I had to FB message a few friends to get their current email addresses, which tells me a lot about who's winning.

Yes, I agree there are times you don't want things unsent. And there are times you do. There are a variety of ways to balance these concerns. But exactly none of them involves saying, "Lo it was handed down to us by Postel the Wise, and none shall tamper with His choices."

Asking to unsend an email is a reasonable request. The answer could be yes or no given the circumstances, but it's only an absurd question to people who have taken a 1980s technological choice and treat it as some sort of unalterable gospel. It reminds me of this Douglas Adams quote:

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

Sure, I get that a lot of people were born after RFC 822, so it seems like the natural order. But the people who wrote the early RFCs weren't thinking that way, and neither should we.

I have no problem with using Slack or Hangouts or Discord or some other chat solution while at work. I also tend to use discord/steam for throw-away conversation with friends.

At no point did I appeal to authority or history in my argument above, so drop the shit around

> "Lo it was handed down to us by Postel the Wise, and none shall tamper with His choices."

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If you think Chat apps are winning, let me know when you can buy an item online without an account linked to an Email. I'd love to see an example.

> drop the shit around

You jumped into a discussion. The person I replied to was treating the email we happen to have as some sort of unchangeable given. That's what I am objecting to. If you are disavowing that side of his argument, feel free to say so, but it looks to me like you lean pretty heavily on it.

> let me know when you can buy an item online without an account linked to an Email. I'd love to see an example.

You mean aside from the billion or so users of WeChat Pay?

> It's not a replacement, it's a complement

> [Chat apps] can work great in a well structured environment

> Use each as needed

> I also tend to use discord/steam for throw-away conversation with friends

Yes, clearly I'm only advocating for the use of email in its current form for all communication, see me lean so hard above?

---

Wechat might as well be the Chinese government, and it requires a Chinese/Hong Kong bank account to use Wechat Pay. If the government won't honor your transaction record, keeping a copy yourself isn't very useful...

> If you think Chat apps are winning, let me know when you can buy an item online without an account linked to an Email. I'd love to see an example.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Sure, but it's limited to mobile numbers where an sms provides the same value as a proof of record. That's why it's limited to mobile phones.

And SMS operates with the same functional principle as email - I own the text after receiving it, and can use it as needed.

> If you think Chat apps are winning, let me know when you can buy an item online without an account linked to an Email. I'd love to see an example.

You can do pretty much anything you want in WeChat, and you don't need an email.

Ok, this one is entirely fair, but also I'd argue the circumstances around it are a little different.

Given how tightly integrated wechat is with the chinese government, and the restriction of wechat pay to use with folks who have a Chinese/Hong Kong bank account, we're talking about different levels of utility around preserving the record.

If the government chooses not to honor your transaction record, it doesn't really matter if you have a copy yourself.

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