--- title: Why Gopher in 2026? | daily.dev description: A phlog entry reflects on why someone would still use the gopher protocol in 2026. Wayne says people like him build phlogs for fun to get a feel for how far... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-gopher-in-2026--xnpomccor twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why Gopher in 2026? | daily.dev og:description: A phlog entry reflects on why someone would still use the gopher protocol in 2026. Wayne says people like him build phlogs for fun to get a feel for how far... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-gopher-in-2026--xnpomccor og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/XnPOmccoR.png og:image:alt: Why Gopher in 2026? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why Gopher in 2026? **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A phlog entry reflects on why someone would still use the gopher protocol in 2026. Wayne says people like him build phlogs for fun to get a feel for how far technology has come, and suggests readers may come for nostalgia or to turn off the noise of modern tech. He contrasts old vi with modern vim's syntax highlighting and googleable configs, and criticizes today's subscriptions and profit-driven services. He calls sdf a nice place that operates the way things used to. A reader comment, left using the gopher client germ 0.4.0, says we cannot go back yet we have to, and that the commenter needs to slow down. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 35 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-25). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers on whether gopher/gemini offer anything beyond nostalgia and protocol-talk-about-itself, with many sharing tools and niche sites they still use, while others question the quality and discoverability of content and whether the underlying problems with publishing on the web are even addressed. **Sentiment:** 40% positive · 45% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Several commenters still actively use and maintain gopher/gemini sites and tools, citing simplicity as the main appeal. - People like that it isn't dominated by billionaires, ads, or AI-generated content. - Some see small protocols like gopher as valuable 'biodiversity' even if they never go mainstream. - A few pointed to specific hosts (sdf.org, magical.fish) and aggregators with genuinely varied, non-meta content. **The pushback** - Many comments note that a large share of gopher/gemini content is just people talking about the protocol itself or overly personal diary-style posts. - One commenter argues neither gopher nor gemini actually solves HTTP's core problem of publishing not being frictionless and decentralized. - Skepticism that leaving the two or three well-known hosts makes it hard to find genuinely interesting technical content. - A comparison is drawn to new social networks (e.g., early Bluesky) whose early content is similarly dominated by talk about the platform itself rather than substance. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters are split between enthusiasm for gopher/gemini's simplicity and tooling versus skepticism that the content is mostly self-referential or overly personal. **Hottest debate:** Whether gopher/gemini content is genuinely interesting and diverse or mostly just navel-gazing about the protocols themselves. **Open questions** - Is there a way to find consistently interesting, non-meta phlogs beyond the handful of well-known hosts? - Could a protocol ever make publishing as frictionless as browsing, without relying on rented servers and domains? **Highlights** > I love the idea of Gopher (even more so of Gemini), but the basic hurdle I run into is content. It feels like half of it is talking about how great gopher/gemini is, and the other half are deeply personal blogs. While the technology reflects the early days of the Internet, the content reflects the early days of blogging and social media (which came later). Rather than talking about things they are passionate about, they are talking about themselves. > — [II2II on hackernews · 8 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227093) > That's one big issue, but I feel like the even bigger one is that neither of them fixes what's wrong with HTTP: Publishing is not a first-class citizen on the net. As long as you need to rent servers and domain names all those alternatives are a waste of time, as they are just repeating all the missteps from HTTP. We need an alternative where you can type some text, hit publish and have it appear on the net with zero friction and in a way that isn't tied to a single third party. Publishing a site needs to be as easy as browsing one. So far Nostr it's the only thing that gets close at the protocol level, but still lacks a good client. > — [grumbel on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230113) > The early years of BlueSky were people talking about how it’s not Twitter. People stick to a social network, and when they move is because they have big complaints about their previous home. If they didn’t, they would never have moved at all. That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Web 2.0 era that everybody that tried to create a new social network had to learn. > — [vconnor on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229060) > I usually check in on gemini://antenna.michaelnordmeyer.com/ and think the content is a bit broader than you suggest. Recent posts cover topics like OpenBSD, Disney movies, Arch Linux, UK local radio, socks, books, and so on. Yes, there are a number of posts about Gemini, too, but it's a minority. > — [NoboruWataya on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230429) > I feel the same about Gander (the Canadian Bluesky-compatible startup). The only content on it is people talking about how it's not Twitter. One of my top three beefs with it. > — [post-it on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50228168) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50226577) · 83 points · 35 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Using the internet like its 1999](https://daily.dev/posts/using-the-internet-like-its-1999-hfy00usnz) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Vim wants you to control, VSCode wants you to consume](https://daily.dev/posts/vim-wants-you-to-control-vscode-wants-you-to-consume-muylrpvxs) · Computer Things · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Is anyone still using Emacs?](https://daily.dev/posts/is-anyone-still-using-emacs--h5edbbhim) · Lobsters · 10 upvotes · 2 comments - [Linus wrote Git in about 10 days, so I asked my local LLM to build something similar with one prompt](https://daily.dev/posts/linus-wrote-git-in-about-10-days-so-i-asked-my-local-llm-to-build-something-similar-with-one-prompt-c0eheydp4) · XDA Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#vim](https://daily.dev/tags/vim) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-gopher-in-2026--xnpomccor) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why Gopher in 2026?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-gopher-in-2026--xnpomccor","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-gopher-in-2026--xnpomccor"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T03:46:55.879Z","dateModified":"2026-10-25T11:32:59.753Z","description":"A phlog entry reflects on why someone would still use the gopher protocol in 2026. 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