This.
Those who complain about email tend to focus on arguing for solutions to problems that don't exist.
7 karma · joined September 3, 2014
Those who complain about email tend to focus on arguing for solutions to problems that don't exist.
That's like saying that the problem with home addresses is that there is no directory.
Well, that's why you ask the people you wish to interact with the contacts he prefers. Business cards, writing you a quick email, phoning them,... You know, stuff that works for centuries.
What doesn't work at all is spreading your info for anyone to see and having to spend the good part of a day to fend off cold callers.
To me that is a good example of how email is flexible, and also simple.
It's flexible because it could support non-ascii text strings, without changing a thing.
It's simple because the protocol doesn't care what the subject says. It only cares that it's an ASCII string.
That sounds like good engineering to me, as well.
You could argue that a new version of the email protocol could be improved to do away with those hacks, but that doesn't take anything away from email's simplicity and flexibility.