@BradyDale It's an annual con that @esr and I attend in MI. Mix of technology, infosec, scifi/fantasy fandom, scifi/fantasy writing, boardgaming, and geek life (food, camping, dancing, martial arts, what-have-you) and other sundry.

The broad range of activities makes for a situation where hackers like ESR and I can brainstorm the Big Things and current projects without being hounded, and also intermittently unwind. It's good times.

https://2017.penguicon.org/

@hfaust Yes, @esr is Eric S. Raymond.

@m0n5t3r @HedgeMage @hfaust Er, say what? What broken software do you believe me to be using?

@m0n5t3r @esr @fl0wn @hfaust @nepfag @moonman Yes, I've been following closely. We set up freehold.earth on Mastodon because of issues with other UIs' non-suitability for busy people.

@maiyannah is setting me up to eval yet another option, but so far the GS stacks haven't held up to scrutiny...

@maiyannah @moonman @nepfag @hfaust @fl0wn @esr @m0n5t3r The running principle here is that social media is made up of PEOPLE, and most of the people I hope to attract are awesome and busy. I cannot affect any kind of movement with a kludgy time-sucking UI.

@m0n5t3r @esr @fl0wn @hfaust @nepfag @moonman It's not a question of attractiveness, it's about how rapidly one can present information. Single column on a widescreen, bad use of whitespace and fonts and visual indicators...ugh. Social media is a tiny part of what I do with my day, it should not be time consuming, it should be content with a presentation I don't notice.

@maiyannah @moonman @nepfag @hfaust @fl0wn @esr @m0n5t3r I'd frankly LOVE to find something with a cleaner back-end architecture (in terms of protocol behavior and stability), the best features of GS and Masto, and a Mastodon-like UI. I'd be willing to help create it if we had a good UI coder on board...but I do not do frontend stuff.

@moonman @nepfag @hfaust @fl0wn @esr @HedgeMage I can do some front end. It wouldn't be whatever the JavaScript kids think is hot rn, but it will work well on mobile devices without a native app. What would the backend platform look like? I'm pretty interested in another iteration of OStatus server that isn't a weird mishmash of rails and node

@superbranch @moonman @nepfag @hfaust @fl0wn @esr I've got a bunch of languages at my disposal, and 3-4 different ones would make not-insane choices for something as simple as this (each with pros and cons). I'd be very likely to choose in part based on the team I could interest in the project, because I have limited free time...I could play architect and do some coding to get it going (also ISO role).

@HedgeMage I have a lot of backend experience with Java and PHO, neither of which I think would be good here. The last few years I've been focusing more on JS & CSS. My opinion is to keep the server side as close to an API as possible and build as a rich client side JS app, which would lend itself to readily to native mobile apps. What languages are you thinking for the backend? I think node is fine. I do object to a hybrid backend when one language should be able to handle it.

@HedgeMage *PHP (yuck)

@superbranch @HedgeMage Perpetual Hole Producer

@puellavulnerata @superbranch You've heard my perspective on PHP, right?

@HedgeMage @superbranch no?

@puellavulnerata @superbranch Years ago, when I divorced suddenly and penniless, I found myself in a too-common position: needing to rapidly come up with the means to put food in my child's mouth and a roof over his head in the aftermath of family trauma.

Some women in my desperate situation end up stripping or become prostitutes...but I...*chokes back tears*...I wrote PHP for money...:sob:

I got out, but it's shocking what a desperate mother will do.

#trueandfunny

@HedgeMage @puellavulnerata @superbranch I'm so sorry, I hope you're in a better place now!

@HerraBRE @puellavulnerata @superbranch I am! Full time infosec, and only dip into PHP when some PHP dev has allowed or caused a terrible compromise.

@superbranch I really like that approach, and CSS/JS are my weak points, so I think we'd be a good compliment for one another.

Python and Go are interesting candidates--from the perspective of rapid development--for the back-end, and both make it easy to break out any performance bottlenecks to Rust or C.

We could go directly to Rust or C...but that may be overkill, and is probably less accessible to new/junior devs who are interested in helping. Thoughts?

@HedgeMage Python is probably the best way to make it accessible to contributors. I can write it to some extent (I've worked on Tribler's social network attempt). I have heard great things about Go but have 0 experience.

@superbranch LOL, actually I'd forgotten but I just got a NextCloud account for being one of @KindlyFire's Patreon supporters. I hadn't realized that it has that functionality. I will set up a doc there.

@HedgeMage My contact email is superbranch@riseup.net

@superbranch Got it, sending you an invite.

@HedgeMage Here is the start of a golang impl https://github.com/deoxxa/don

@maiyannah @esr Please ping me when you have that mock-up available!