I wouldn’t do a mailing list these days, but as someone who spent the early part of my career interacting with devs that preferred this method, it’s actually pretty ergonomic by a 2005 standard. A message thread aware, text based email client that can turn messages into patches in a keystroke makes it actually pretty comparable to modern code review…
I think it’s hard for younger devs to get this because they’re used to email being stuck in a crappy, unthreaded browser interface or Outlook etc. (which are terrible for mailing lists) and most collaboration taking place in code review and chat platforms like Teams/Slack but for decades before these were feasible, email was the way…
It certainly beats Teams, Slack, or Discord. For a start, you have control over the messages and can actually search on them.
@onlinepersona I will admit that the search feature in GNU Mailman could use an upgrade on its archive search.
I actually get all of my mail list posts right here in Friendica as I use kill-the-newsletter to subscribe and “friend” the RSS so post just show in my social media feed the same as Mastodon Toots and Lemmy Posts, so they don’t overcrowd my email inbox.