Comment by jonstokes

6 years ago

Looks like Zawinski's Law is still 100% true:

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the “Law of Software Envelopment”) to express his belief that all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html

7 comments

jonstokes

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mattnewport  6 years ago

So why are there no really good email clients?

  • kevinmgranger  6 years ago

    Because email clients can only be as good as email itself, which isn't really good. ;)

    • mattnewport  6 years ago

      I know you're being facetious but email clients fail to satisfy me primarily when it comes to search and organization, remaining performant when dealing with large archives of mail, good UI/UX and robustness / reliability. None of these are really problems inherent to email, though they are perhaps inherent to software.

      2 replies →

orloffm  6 years ago

Back around 2000 programs were instead expanding until they were able to burn CDs. And apps a few years ago - until they included Snapchat-like stories.