Completely agreed. I've been bootstrapping a new project with a colleague I've known for years. We worked together in the same office for a long time, know how each other work exceptionally well. We started this project up during the quarantine, while living a few time zones apart. It was going quite slowly, until we could finally meet up (vaccines!). We worked through issues we had been going back and forth over for weeks in less than two hours, and had time to head to a bar for an early happy hour.

In person can truly make a difference. You're all subject to the same distractions, can keep each other on task, and pound through collective decisions in a way even a video chat can never facilitate well.

Face to face conversation doesn’t scale. It’s also still possible with zoom…

A hallway conversation is a random happenstance between a couple of people. Any decisions made are going to have to be communicated more broadly as a next step anyway, which will require written communication.

Here is another way to think about it; if we were having this conversation in face to face, how long do you think it would take? I suspect after maybe fifteen minutes we would probably have felt out where the actual differences in our opinions lay and why and if for some reason we needed to codify this understanding I trust that either of us would be able to put it in written form and have it capture the nuance of that conversation. I think it would take a little longer in zoom and I would have a lower confidence that we had properly understood each others perspective. Face to face communication has a whole lot of information in the form of body language, intonation, expressions, etc that I don't think can be reasonably approximated in text format, even with reactions like in Discord (which are very helpful!) it still feels fraught.

I feel like I totally understand your position, I just respectfully disagree. I’d say I’ve spent ~two minutes max in this thread, from the comfort of my house, doing about 6 other things to clear my mind between code bursts.

It’s pretty hard to read and comment on HN when you’re in the office. Especially an open office where everyone can see your screen.

It doesn't have to scale. Sometimes it just makes it easier for a few stakeholders to get through something more easily and quickly.