Why Gopher in 2026?

andsoitis 51 points 15 comments October 24, 2026
gopher.muffinlabs.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (7 comments)

prologic

I still think Gopher (the protocol that is) is still very relevant today. The beauty of it really is in its simplicity. Great to see that the library I wrote all those years ago is still being used :D https://pkg.go.dev/git.mills.io/prologic/go-gopher

vaporup

- https://geminiprotocol.net - https://reticulum.network

II2II

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.

jmclnx

Why ? It is not owned and controlled by billionaires. Plus no AI slop being spammed to gopher sites. FWIW, the same applies to gemini protocol.

ecliptik

Few months ago I had Claude build me a Gopher browser for Classic Macintosh systems, geomys[1]. I was using TurboGopher[2] before then, and it worked, but had a lot of design choices that are clunky today. I tried to focus on keeping with the Apple HIG from the 1990s, while also making it more aligned with modern browser principles. 1. https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys 2. https://www.macintoshrepository.org/265-turbogopher

rektlessness

Proud exSDF member from the old days. SDF was considered 'vintage' back when i joined so must be doubly so now. Was introduced to Gopher back then too, along with NetBSD. What a blast from the past to see SDF.org make it to HN in 2026. Proud grandpa. lol.

ottoflux

SDF is wonderful. Been supporting them for around 20 years.

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