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Simplicity of IRC

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Re: Simplicity of IRC

#51
post #38

It’s a real shame how difficult programming is. I don’t mean that it is difficult to write difficult things, but that it is difficult to write simple things. Once upon a time, one could download visual studio, click about to make a new project in (e.g.) Visual Basic, draw a gui in the gui editor, and click the run button. One could then start adding simple functionality (e.g. working through a book). Or even longer a…

> on windows This is the mistake. Linux and, I believe, OSX come with several tools pre-installed including python.

Windows comes with PowerShell, which is a pretty fully featured programming language that can interface directly with the .NET ecosystem.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#52
post #38

It’s a real shame how difficult programming is. I don’t mean that it is difficult to write difficult things, but that it is difficult to write simple things. Once upon a time, one could download visual studio, click about to make a new project in (e.g.) Visual Basic, draw a gui in the gui editor, and click the run button. One could then start adding simple functionality (e.g. working through a book). Or even longer a…

> on windows This is the mistake. Linux and, I believe, OSX come with several tools pre-installed including python.

A tool shouldn’t need to come preinstalled with the OS in order to be useable. And “switch to a different OS” is not a good solution especially for cases where you don’t control the OS you run.

For a long time MacOS came with only Python 2.x installed. I looked up what the latest version of MacOS comes with and came across an Apple support forum post with several responses posting conflicting answers [0]. One person got an Xcode related error. Having to install a heavyweight IDE just to get a language to run correctly is the type of needless complication the parent comment is talking about.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/691403

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#53
post #16
post #10

A number of moons ago, I switched from a company that used IRC for its internal, real-time, ephemeral communication needs to an enterprise shop that used Microsoft Teams to do that (and of course other communication stuff, as the boundaries for what was better kept in Sharepoint, Confluence, Email/Exchange, the legacy Wiki, and/or Teams were never quite clear :)) there. In the old shop, we eventually had all kinds of…

The integrations are a neat trick, but often end up spamming a channel where people are trying to communicate. Teams seamlessly works across platforms, and mobile with video chat, files, outlook integration, and screen sharing. Maybe IRC could of been that, but it never happened.

Teams is by far and away the worst UI of any chat system I’ve used.

I get why it’s designed the way it is, it’s trying to be Sharepoint, Slack, Zoom and Outlook. And as a result it does every single one of them worse.

Sometimes integration is better left as event handlers rather than trying to make IRC behave like a Wiki.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#54
post #10

A number of moons ago, I switched from a company that used IRC for its internal, real-time, ephemeral communication needs to an enterprise shop that used Microsoft Teams to do that (and of course other communication stuff, as the boundaries for what was better kept in Sharepoint, Confluence, Email/Exchange, the legacy Wiki, and/or Teams were never quite clear :)) there. In the old shop, we eventually had all kinds of…

I tend to agree. I have the same reservations with HTTP2 to a lesser degree. I won’t deny that the complexity added by HTTP2 will greatly improve speeds in certain cases, and this may very well be needed to keep the greater interwebs working at comfortable speeds moving forward, but a part of me is greatly saddened by losing the sheer simplicity that is HTTP1.1.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#55
post #3

Same with SMTP and POP, I would routinely send or get email via telnet when I wanted to debug or delete some messages. They're all very simple protocols.

Usenet too. Getting news and discuss stuff "offline" and fetching/sending the messages once a week it's magical and resting.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, the fact that you can literally pipe some data in a command-line IRC client is 1000x more conducive to such tweaking than using custom APIs/SDKs long live the Unix model!

Doesn't that mean you get a channel join/leave for almost every message?

It is possible to post a message without joining if the channel has -n set (not the default for the obvious reason).

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#57
post #38

It’s a real shame how difficult programming is. I don’t mean that it is difficult to write difficult things, but that it is difficult to write simple things. Once upon a time, one could download visual studio, click about to make a new project in (e.g.) Visual Basic, draw a gui in the gui editor, and click the run button. One could then start adding simple functionality (e.g. working through a book). Or even longer a…

> on windows This is the mistake. Linux and, I believe, OSX come with several tools pre-installed including python.

> Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/406244/will-macos-...

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#58
IRC is great!

I like the interface way more than Discord.

And it seems to attract more knowledgeable people.

If you are into startups, check out #startups on Libera!

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#59
I used IRC for gaming around 2004 - fond memories!

I recently tried Discord to find programming communities but I just don't get it. When you join a server you are automatically subscribed to all the channels. And apparently you can't leave them, you can only 'silence' them by manually doing that for each channel. After a few days I just gave up as I could not keep up with all the notifications.

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