Text-based e-mail client!
So back in my stupid noob days in 2003 or so, I put a huge emphasis on the graphical quality of programs and websites and operating systems. I would hate any site that didn’t have flashy backgrounds and complicated fonts and novelty accents like falling snowflakes. In fact, I used to hate Wordpress (back before everyone started developing nice themes for it) because it was too simple and “ugly” for me. I used to hate any program that didn’t have a brilliant interface and brilliant-er abstract classes to implement them (okay bad Java reference).
But nowadays I find myself gravitating more and more towards simplicity, minimalism (I think I use that word and its variants way too much), and down-to-earth text-based programs… which is why I was ecstatic when Paul Baranay told me about MIT’s Athena program Pine:
No seriously, look at it. A text-based e-mail client. Whoa-my-god, IHTFP. I’ve always abhorred Gmail because of it’s AJAX, I’ve hated Hotmail because it’s just a sucky client, I’ve disliked Yahoo because of it’s upgrade from simple HTML rendering to a flashy AJAX interface like Gmail… but this? This is perfect. Stripped bare of all the unnecessary crap that confounds clients like Gmail and Thunderbird (no offense Mozilla; if it makes you feel any better I’m still an FF fangirl), Pine is easy to use and navigate, but still provides the full functionality to send/receive e-mails and only that. I don’t need any flashy options or add-ons. When I open an e-mail client, I want to contact someone, dammit. I want to type in a message and know it has sent. Well, this interface is all that I need.
Damn, I need to get a life.
