Just got a basic “follow this link to confirm your email address” email working in Node.js and nodemailer in under 100 lines of code (20 of which are the email message itself.)

No external SMTP relay, no sendmail, nada. Just a DNS lookup, a signed email, and a direct SMTP connection.

(And no, the messages aren’t going to spam.)

Complexity is poison for Small Tech. Our designs must reflect our success criteria, not Big Tech’s. Return to first principles and simplify, simplify, simplify!