Is the prevailing advice still not to bother with self-hosting email?

Unfortunately, yes. Here’s a fantastic blog post from someone who gave up on self-hosting last year due to the vast number of problems with self-hosting. The post also does a great job at pointing out why the death of self-hosting email is so bad in general, but still regrettably concludes that it isn’t worth it in any scenario right now.

Maybe the Cuban president should ensure vital infrastructure can be maintained and holds an inventory of spares?

Something that’d be significantly easier to do if it weren’t for the US’s continued immoral blockade and sanctions? Cuba does not have the resources to maintain the plant purely on their own, and they can’t hit a magic button that will suddenly let them find an abundance of spare tools and equipment to repair their infrastructure in a disaster scenario without wider access to international trade.

Even as an embedded C developer I use “idx” and “count” instead of “i”. Not just because I’m a member of the “slightly longer but more descriptive names are better” gang, but also for searchability. If I’m trying to track down where an array is accessed in a loop, for example, “idx” is more likely to take me only to the results I’m looking for and not also the “i” in int8_t or whatever.

Shit, Microsoft docs are better than most other large companies with broadly used software even, not just random undocumented BS from smaller companies and products. In my experience, Microsoft’s Xamarin docs are somehow often a better guide for Android development than Google’s docs (good god are the official Android docs some of the hottest garbage that a company of Google’s size and talent could put out), and I’ve yet to find a better general reference for any language or library than Microsoft’s .NET documentation. I’ve seen a lot of people dunk on it for it’s verbosity and/or “example bloat” but I love the length of their docs for breaking down different use-cases and giving examples of each, along with potential misuses and recommended alternatives.

That said, they do still have some garbage docs (like what OP is pointing out), but my general experience with their docs, especially for their larger/more mainstream products, has been surprisingly positive.

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This is really what brings the meme together, it’s just so… chef’s kiss