I see that there are already two Scala communities in Lemmy and, while I don't see any in Kbin, that looks like a nice alternative. Seems hard to say which one will take off 😅.
I'm kind of curious to see which one will win in the end. The fact that I don't have to create any new account either way is very nice (no need to pick a side).
(P.S. This comment might be broken, I'm trying to see what happens if I reply from my instance)
The lemmy.ml instance has some controversies regarding its maintainers, which may have an impact on adopters. programming.dev seems safer for now, for programming communities; I just hope that it's a well-maintained instance.
The fact that I don’t have to create any new account either way is very nice (no need to pick a side).
That's the only reason why I'm so invested in federated protocols :)
Of course it adds convenience if there happen to be a single place for the community to organize around, but you can subscribe to the alternatives and your feed wouldn't look different. I would also expect lemmy to, at some point, grow a feature to "link" communities together (like "spaces" in Matrix, that you subscribe to and get a list of related rooms/groups/communities in return).