Weekly Journal 105 - Random Observations

Random Observations

Just a couple of random observations I had this week.

“Community” Chat

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate most technical community chats. So many open source projects have a Slack or Discord or something similar that is the primary way to contact other people in the community. While I think there is a place for chat, I don’t think it makes for a good community experience if it’s the primary or only tool in play. Chat is great for real time conversations, but it makes a lousy source of information for a project. It is not fun to try and find historical information by searching and sifting through chat logs. I miss the days when most projects had a forum or bulletin board as their primary resource. A public forum is much easier to search, and it gets indexed by search engines. Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at clouds, but I feel like we’ve taken a big step backwards with the reliance on chat.

Television Sucks

Over the past several years now, I have noticed a diminishing interest in watching television shows and movies. It seems that the networks and streaming services are focused on creating low quality content to boost the perceived size of their libraries. As a result, I find myself watching less and less content. Outside of the occasional show or movie that catches my interest, the only thing I really watch any more is sports and old movies from my personal collection. Life is too short to waste time on poor quality content. On the plus side, I do find that I have more time for reading and other hobbies instead.