One thing I recently realized is how many protocols are basically the same but ended up in different fields of application by accident.
SMTP can transfer arbitrary blocks of text data from a@b to x@y. Usenet can broadcast arbitrary blocks of text data with just a few mandatory headers, so why don't we use NNTP for blogging? You can put mails in your own outbox via IMAP, where the mail server can pick them up and send them. Why don't browsers load HTML via FTP? ActivityPub is basically SMTP if it was JSON (it's so much SMTP that it has a field for 'envelope sender' which was previously thought to be a specific quirk of SMTP), so why don't we use it for email? Or why don't we use SMTP for chatting? Actually, wait, Delta Chat literally does that. Or why don't we use XMPP for email? Or, I don't know, Apache Kafka or Redis. A Kafka server allows you to publish arbitrary messages and stores them until they're retrieved, which is also what a mail server or a chat server does. The only real difference is how authorization works. If you run IRC over Kafka, or IRC over NNTP, you won't lose messages when you disconnect - sounds pretty sensible. Actually what is the difference between NNTP and Apache Kafka, anyway? You get the idea...
Totanly agreed. We as a profession do not learn what existed before, only what the latest are doing and it's tiring. We value creating instead of reusing and maintaining, as seen in the extreme in the evaluation process at Google. We have Show HN for brand new stuff and not Remember HN for past, proven technologies put back to use.
Maybe that's the root of the problem. Making technological toys for fun is absolutely ok, but when we pretend to solve people's problems we should probably take a look at old ideas first
SMTP can transfer arbitrary blocks of text data from a@b to x@y. Usenet can broadcast arbitrary blocks of text data with just a few mandatory headers, so why don't we use NNTP for blogging? You can put mails in your own outbox via IMAP, where the mail server can pick them up and send them. Why don't browsers load HTML via FTP? ActivityPub is basically SMTP if it was JSON (it's so much SMTP that it has a field for 'envelope sender' which was previously thought to be a specific quirk of SMTP), so why don't we use it for email? Or why don't we use SMTP for chatting? Actually, wait, Delta Chat literally does that. Or why don't we use XMPP for email? Or, I don't know, Apache Kafka or Redis. A Kafka server allows you to publish arbitrary messages and stores them until they're retrieved, which is also what a mail server or a chat server does. The only real difference is how authorization works. If you run IRC over Kafka, or IRC over NNTP, you won't lose messages when you disconnect - sounds pretty sensible. Actually what is the difference between NNTP and Apache Kafka, anyway? You get the idea...