Any "General" Programming Forums Or Mailing Lists?

22 points by rtpg

Given the recent Discord news, I have been wondering if there are active forums or mailing lists that are "about programming" while not being about a specific project that people have been enjoying.

While I really get a lot of value from Lobste.rs and chatting with people on this platform, there are certain discussions that are hard to have given that most conversations must be in response to some article, so certain longer form conversations don't have a place.

jaredkrinke

In the past, I think Usenet served this function. I hate to say it, but today maybe Reddit is the closest equivalent?

Hopefully someone else has a better suggestion!

wrs

I wonder if a version of Lobsters that had “sub-Lobsters” would be a simple way to get there. Same algorithm, but scoped to smaller topical fora.

“Why does something turn into Reddit” is an unsolved (?) sociological question, of course.

ploum

What about exploring mailing-lists (or even creating one) on Freelists?

https://www.freelists.org/lists.html

dzwdz

I really wish I knew any good ones.

If anyone made some sort of sibling forum to lobste.rs, I'd join in a heartbeat. Just saying :p

rtpg

I've thought about spinning up a thing, but beyond building critical mass I've been procrastinating on account of not wanting to run Discourse

I'm fine using Discourse (enjoy the Django and Python forums a lot) but everyone who runs it complains.

My sort of daydream is a Django-y package that gives basic forum functionality, if only because I know how to run a Django application.
- koala
  
  I think it's either some mailing list software, Zulip, or yes, I also dislike Discourse, but it's pretty decent (you really need to buy into their deployment, unfortunately, which I don't like- that's why I stopped running it).
  
  I'll also add that you can use managed services. Zulip has a decent free tier, there are a couple of organizations that will run Discourse for you, etc. I don't think that's a huge deal!
- southclaws
  
  I've been quietly building an open source forum software for the last few years, partly out of frustration with running Discourse - I'd love some feedback on it if you'd be willing to give it a spin!
kevinc

This discussion isn't in response to an article; you asked a question and that's all it took. I think this site could fill that role if its navigation was set up to be used that way. We don't have forum sections, but we do have tag pages; maybe all that's ostensibly missing is that phpBB table of contents page.
smlckz

What do you think about Threadiverse? i.e. Lemmy, Kbin/Mbin, PieFed etc. which should allow broad participation across Fediverse. Either this community about programming can be used or new communities can be created for more specific subject matters, instance differences or choice of moderators.
- ploum
  
  I second this.
rtpg

It's a bit more operations focused (and scoped to Australia) but I've landed on the Whirlpool forums when trying to deal with Aussie internet-related stuff and it's all generally serious

It's an interesting example of what the minimal level of scoping can be for a forum. "internet stuff... for people in Australia". Just need a bit!
mattrose

I'm on the Well and there are programming discussions that go back 30 years. It's a monthly fee, but they're owned by the community.

It's like the colonial williamsburg of the internet, and there's even a primitive text interface you can use over ssh, but the discussions there are good.