Show HN: Use Slack for Everything

Post by nixgeek » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #33

criddell wrote: post #30

This is neat, but I guess I don't really understand the problem this is solving. The company I work for uses Slack and I like it a lot. However, I've never found myself wishing that I could get a stock quote (or do a trade!), map an address, or play hangman there. Similarly, I think I could do a lot of that stuff from Emacs, but I never have. I use Emacs to edit text and I use Slack to chat. It might be because of th…

The stock quote and hangman plugins are really just demos. Where services like this really shine is when you integrate them with your existing systems. Starting a Jenkins build from your Slack channel is pretty nifty.

Post by LinuxBender » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #7

lwhalen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run an IRC server, configure a hubot. Yes, 'cloud'-based chat is pretty, but it's a new coat of paint over something that's been around for decades (IRC). For a company less than several thousand people, running your own singleton IRC server is about as complicated as setting up a basic 3-tier web application (i.e., a little fiddly, but not hard at all)

Clients on the other hand are somewhat lacking for IRC. We use Slack in a company of ~30, and while all the devs could easily use IRC, most of the rest of the company would struggle with it, and certainly wouldn't be able to communicate in the wide variety of ways (uploaded files, images/gifs, videos, code snippets, etc) that they do now. Slack is great at making all those rich media types 'just work', and while it w…

Post by LinuxBender » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

f_ wrote: post #31

snuxoll wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliance is an annoying issue with IRC. With Slack, Lync, or 99% of Jabber servers out there I can log every communication that takes place (outside of people using something like OTR with Jabber) - I can set up an IRC bot in every channel to log group chats, and maybe somehow disable private messages, but it's a pain in the butt to deal with IRC where compliance is a big deal (I work in healthcare). I've often toy…

Indeed compliance is an issue with IRC, but you don't need to write an IRCd to log all messages and you don't even need to configure IRC services: you could just use InspIRCd [1] (which, by the way, is a superb and extensible IRCd) and an extension such as [2] to achieve what you are looking for. [1] https://www.inspircd.org/ [2] https://github.com/joshenders/inspircd-m_chatlog

Post by danpalmer » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 9:33 AM UTC

cballard wrote: post #12

danpalmer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clients on the other hand are somewhat lacking for IRC. We use Slack in a company of ~30, and while all the devs could easily use IRC, most of the rest of the company would struggle with it, and certainly wouldn't be able to communicate in the wide variety of ways (uploaded files, images/gifs, videos, code snippets, etc) that they do now. Slack is great at making all those rich media types 'just work', and while it w…

On one hand, you're completely right, on the other, I wish I could block all GIFs from Slack (or just not get notified about them). That kind of thing doesn't help me get work done, which is what I'm at work to do - not to share funny pictures.