Post #1339765

2026-03-26 08:39 UTC

@silverpill @delta might like to have a word with you. 😅 I did not try to make the literal comparison between a person who emails or creates email-related software with #fediverse AP solution development. What I did want to point out was how blurred the lines are in the #ActivityPub fediverse between stuff that is the protocol, and stuff that is solution development i.e. app-specific / domain-specific. The anti-patterns I listed are encountered by any newcomer dev who takes an interest in creating fedi apps & services, and is faced with much more than they bargained for when reading the AS/AP specs. It forms a barrier to entry, decrease in attractiveness to create fedi apps, and devs leaving the space for greener pastures (e.g. to #ATProto or various still-less-mature-than-fedi #P2P protocols)

Replies (1)

@smallcircles@social.coop 2026-03-26 08:57

@silverpill There are a couple of #ActivityPub projects that focus on providing the good tools that abstract away the complexities of wire-level network comms, and help free the hands of a solution developer to focus more directly on what people need, instead of on plumbing and Babylonian speech confusion of how things fit together. I try to emphasize these projects, e.g. @fedify by listing them higher in the https://delightful.coding.social curated lists. But their challenge is to offer a kind of reverse to browser quirks mode. Web browsers can handle about any malformed HTML a person throws at it, and still manage to turn that into machine processable form, and make the most of it. As a fedi toolkit builder you almost need to do the opposite. Focus on offering comprehensive and intuitive API's and functionality to solution developers, and translate it into wire chaos that constitutes the fediverse-protocol-of-the-day.

Open ##1339766