Also perhaps to help alleviate from inflammatory styles, I would like to request again a channel where we can vent our complaints about the present of programming.

@yairchu @Steve Dekorte @wtaysom — I can't imagine that a flame channel would successfully draw the combative messages away from everywhere else. So whether or not we have a channel like that, we still need a way to solve the issue @Doug Moen encountered, where his thread was derailed with a tangential rant. I also don't love the idea of a channel where we encourage negativity. Would it be bad to do something like this as an invite-only private channel? At least then newcomers to the community wouldn't see us crassly venting our frustrations and be soured by it.

I’ll use this situation to explain my original idea in more detail because this context describing it as a flame-wars channels is really not it. I wish I could find the original thread but couldn’t get the slack history search thing to work for me. For context, at the time Steve verbally wrote that he thought it was good idea, even though didn’t end up creating the channel. The name we talked about at the time was “support group”. With that context I’ll try to describe the idea: Like others, I often get into a situation where something with the “present of coding” frustrates me - as a simple example: https://twitter.com/yairchu/status/1181147839050784773?s=20 When such a situation arises, if there was a channel here where I could describe my frustration, it would serve as a valuable tool: • People could see what’s frustrating for other programmers in the present of programming (which is actually not one thing - there are actually many languages and tools) • Following such sharing, people could discuss about what are the alternatives. This may give folks ideas or points folks to relevant ideas for their own frustrations. And might occasionally even offer people with immediate solutions to their ailments. • People could find folks who share the same frustrations and perhaps believe in the same solutions. Perhaps that could end up fostering collaborations

Yes, a rested me agrees that there are enough other forums for flaming. We don't want to be Hacker News after all. 🤫

i’m not sure this group is the right place for it or that venting or complaining is exactly what i thinks being asked for but i would also love to have a spot where i can just drop user interface feedback on the experience of programming in general

@yairchu (and @Garth Goldwater) That sort of discussion is perfectly appropriate for general, and it'd probably get a great reaction there. The framing device "Here's an issue I have with a current tool, and I'd like to explore ideas for alternatives" is fantastic, and we should have more threads like that I think. I'm not sure what adding a dedicated channel accomplishes. Worth bearing in mind: every new channel starts with zero people and so everyone needs (A) learn about it, and (B) choose to join, and (C) decide/remember to post there.