I used to work at Sendmail, it was my first job. The entire premise of the company was "Sendmail is so hard to use, let us run it for you". We had software that added a GUI for configuration and management, and Pro Services to set up big installs.
But also we had all the top maintainers of Sendmail. And we ran Sendmail for our corp mail.
Once we had a problem with the network, so we had to reroute corporate mail over a phone line. One of the maintainers came down, typed what looked like line noise for five minutes, and all of a sudden all the mail was working again.
It was crazy to watch him basically read and write raw Sendmail configs. He didn't even use m4.
I used to do this at Uni, and I actually enjoyed it. It was like a complicated puzzle, and the thrill of solving it was powerful. I remember spending days getting a SunOS <-> Lotus Notes gateway working the way I wanted it to.
Ironically, M4 felt over-complicated and abstracted, so I did not want to learn that. Direct edit all the way.
vi /etc/sendmail.cf
This seemed like an obscure parlor trick that vanishingly few people could appreciate. I was totally OK with that.
And I was truly shocked to later learn that there were people willing to pay for this service. Ah simpler times.
But also we had all the top maintainers of Sendmail. And we ran Sendmail for our corp mail.
Once we had a problem with the network, so we had to reroute corporate mail over a phone line. One of the maintainers came down, typed what looked like line noise for five minutes, and all of a sudden all the mail was working again.
It was crazy to watch him basically read and write raw Sendmail configs. He didn't even use m4.