[weehoo]

You can’t unsend an email because you can’t force someone else to delete something. Emails end up as files on someone else’s server. Claiming this is a UX issue is intentionally missing the point. If this is legitimately a foreign concept to you, an afternoon setting up postfix and playing around with it might be worth your time. Email is a protocol, not a program. A “delete” request would be just that, a request.

You can “unsend” on those platforms because the GUI does not display files saved locally, it always fetches them from the server. If you could “unsend” on a version control platform, then it would cease to be distributed version control. The code would have to live inside the VCS app (the same way messages are in memory in slack), or you’d have to give a network daemon delete privileges on your file system.

Imagine if youtube-dl used the model you’re proposing. Letting the git equivalent of “unsend” propagate through the system takes you from a redundant system to, not a system with a single point of failure, but even worse, a system with many points of failure.

Git is for helping develop open source projects, where sometimes a random gal who will never show up again fixes a small thing and sends the maintainer the diff through email. If you want a tool for the high trust environment of your individual team, git will never be what you want. It literally wouldn’t work for its intended workflow if it did what you want.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

> Emails end up as files on someone else’s server.

When I use my Gmail account to send an email to another Gmail user, this is obviously not the case. Many adults in their twenties have never used a desktop email application - at my company the younger new hires need some time to figure out how to use Outlook, and they're engineers. They've grown up with the cloud as a given, local storage as the exception, and centralized messaging apps as the default method of communication.

I'm not going to argue about whether way of thinking about computing is any better or worse, but undeniably convenient, and it's definitely the direction we're headed.

[wpietri]

Thanks for the explanation, but I ran mail servers for ~25 years. I am familiar with the technology, and in the mid-90s even wrote a chapter of a book explaining email. And I've been using version control even longer. Maybe try rereading what I wrote without the assumption that it comes from ignorance.

[horsawlarway]

I think your comments are coming from ignorance, though.

Without trying to be snarky - All your comments directly ignore that what you're proposing values one stakeholder more highly than another.

People keep pointing out that there are two users involved in this exchange, and they both weigh equally, and you dismiss them and talk about running mail servers 25 years ago (who cares?).

You keep saying "I should be able to unsend my email". Let me rephrase your question - Why should you be allowed to delete my email?

[wpietri]

I have in fact never said "I should be able to unsend my email". Once. In my life. Please try to argue with my actual points; I don't have time for straw men.

[horsawlarway]

wpietri:

>Asking to unsend an email is a reasonable request. The answer could be yes or no given the circumstances, but it's only an absurd question to people who have taken a 1980s technological choice and treat it as some sort of unalterable gospel.

---

We're here answering affirmatively that "No" is the right answer for a LOT more reasons than an appeal to authority and history, and you accuse me of a strawman?

I wish you the best in life. Have a good day.

[wpietri]

Yes, I am indeed accusing you of a strawman. You seem very much in the discussion to win it, whatever that means to you. I can only hope that, having decided you are victorious, you'll now leave me alone, because none of your comments seem particularly productive to me.