[shirro]

A controversial headline and a bit of opinion creates controversy and gains views. Once this sort of information would be written in a plain text HOWTO and posted to usenet but now we have to clickbait everything so it gets posted to HN.

SMTP is hopelessly naive by the standards of today as it was designed to work in a much smaller and more trusted environment. The additional reputation protocols are well intentioned and work well if the receiver acts on them and are not at all silly or unholy. They are not difficult to configure but neither are they as simple as a redesigned protocol might be.

If you don't need to setup your own mail servers or have a desire to develop and maintain skills in that area then use a pre-configured service.

Otherwise I am fairly sure that configuring these things is far simpler than most trade skills. I don't think there is any comparison between the time it would take to read some docs and add a few lines to a config file and learning to become a proficient welder. If you work with servers and want to be good at your craft I think email is still one of the services people should know how to configure and secure.