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Having built several in multiple languages, I'd recommend for anyone to build their own email client. It's quite easy to get the basics up and running but quic
by jakejake 11y ago
Having built several in multiple languages, I'd recommend for anyone to build their own email client.
It's quite easy to get the basics up and running but quickly becomes tricky getting all of the messages to display consistently. Then you can add embedded images and attachments to the mix. The list goes on and on. But, you really will learn a lot about protocols, parsing text & binary data, working with legacy formats and just all kinds of interesting stuff. Even if you don't wind up with an amazing client, it's still a lot of fun!
- stevekemp 11y agoI'd second that. The basics are easy, but there will be constant niggles relating to RFC2047 header-parsing, MIME-issues, and issues relating to handling some crazy mails that people will send. I've written my mail-clients in C++, but I suspect Perl, Python, or Ruby, would be fast enough with the massive caveat that you need to have decent libraries/interfaces for the low-level parts.