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Simplicity of IRC

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Re: Simplicity of IRC

#221

Post by young_unixer »

f1refly wrote: post #217
young_unixer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which creates more problems than solutions. If the Python version that comes with your OS is not the one you want (e.g. it's outdated), then you'll have to: 1. Install the version you want anyway, and all the tools required (that usually don't come preinstalled in the OS) 2. Try to not make them collide, which, last time I tried, was a PITA, because the OS depends on original version of Python being in the the $PATH…

>and then people simply installed the actual, full version of Python they wanted. Which then wouldn't work for all the repository python programs. The repo's python is what everything is built and tested against, so there is no replacing that.

The package manager could install its own version of Python, isolated from the rest of the system, so that it doesn't get in the way of the user, but repository programs know where it is and can use it.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#222

Post by Aeolun »

tl wrote: post #149
efdee wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is, unless the enterprise has policies to abide by disallowing API calls ...What?

Welcome to enterprise, where breaking things is a feature so commonly used Microsoft has documentation for it [1] and things are often deployed by people whose sole concern is "minimize attack surfaces". Our Teams installation not only disables API calls (official Teams client only), chat sessions are deleted if no one posts to them meaning most chat history is lost every weekend. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us…

> Our Teams installation not only disables API calls (official Teams client only)

Wait? Can you even make API calls to Teams without getting the account owner to make a key for you? I’ve been looking for a way to use a personal key or credentials to make some calls, but the docs are absolutely impenetrable.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#223

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

alkonaut wrote: post #130
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then have the chat client automatically upload to a service and generate a link behind the scenes.

That’s what any client does of course. But the default should be to also display the images (or clickable miniatures). Nothing that can’t be solved in any protocol - but you are both having to duct tape several services (a poor UX for the maintainer of the service) and what you are creating is basically converging on any of the modern alternatives.

I mean, yes, the idea is to recreate the same-ish experience as the alternatives, but in a modular way; the point is to make it flexible and expose the absolute maximum API surface.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#224

Post by Winsaucerer »

grishka wrote: post #70
DogLover_ wrote: post #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.

Discord is horrible and I don't understand why so many people like it so much. First thing I do when joining a new "server" is to mute all and any broadcast (@everyone/@here/roles) mentions. Broadcast mentions should have never been invented.

For me, discord was an easy way to get friends on voice chat together. The chat functionality is a nice bonus.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#225

Post by stjohnswarts »

Whenever IRC comes up I never miss a chance to recommend my favorite extensible (in several languages) IRC client weechat. I believe there have been some forks to handle discord and matrix as well.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#226

Post by trixie_ »

laumars wrote: post #203
trixie_ wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seamlessly going from a chat about a problem, to a video meeting, to screen sharing, to sharing files, and then continuing the conversation on mobile, to scheduling a teams meeting later in the week to follow up and fully integrated into outlook is what I’m talking about.

Which is fine if your chat UI doesn’t totally suck for 99.9% of the other use cases. I’d readily take the additional pain of switching applications if it means I don’t have to deal with Teams for chat. Also all video conferencing and chat applications support sharing files. This isn’t some unheard of feature that Microsoft have pioneered. It’s been possible since the BBS days. It’s possible in XMPP and IRC. It’s poss…

You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable. The mobile app is especially nice. I can carry a meeting from my phone to my desktop without skipping a beat. They are constantly adding features and polishing, but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat. Yes the app is relatively new compared to slack but improving quickly, for example the last update - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#227

Post by alkonaut »

u801e wrote: post #205
alkonaut wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto playing animation can be a client setting. As can rendering pictures at all. Regardless, the UX of slack, discord, teams etc. is different from IRC because it’s what people expect from an IM client

That may be true for personal use, but not necessarily true for business related use. That's because the former case is limited to users who want to use the product precisely because of its features. In the latter case, users are required to use the product as part of their job. Given that, the ideal case would be to not introduce features that lead to a negative user experience.

The same people who use smartphone IM apps in their free time are using corporate IM clients at work. I can't see why business users would be any different. I expect my app at work to be able to do what my at-home IM client does. It could even be the same one.

> features that lead to a negative user experience.

Any feature can be a negative user experience. There is only one way to see what a majority of users are "expecting" and that is to open the mainstream IM apps in default configuration. The worst case of poor user experience is breaking the expectation that it works exactly like that.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#228

Post by laumars »

trixie_ wrote: post #226
laumars wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine if your chat UI doesn’t totally suck for 99.9% of the other use cases. I’d readily take the additional pain of switching applications if it means I don’t have to deal with Teams for chat. Also all video conferencing and chat applications support sharing files. This isn’t some unheard of feature that Microsoft have pioneered. It’s been possible since the BBS days. It’s possible in XMPP and IRC. It’s poss…

You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable. The mobile app is especially nice. I can carry a meeting from my phone to my desktop without skipping a beat. They are constantly adding features and polishing, but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat. Yes the app is relatively new compared to slack but improving quickly, for example the last update - https://techcommunity.micro…

“Usable” isn’t acceptable when every other solution is intuitive. I don’t just want something “usable”, after 30 years of research in GUI design I expect something better than just usable from one of the largest software developers in the world.

And this is why myself and others keep saying Teams is garbage. Why settle for something that is only just barely usable when there are a dozen other solutions on the market that are highly intuitive.

I’ve lost count of the number of textual messages I’ve missed in Teams because of the appalling way groups are handled. Or the number of lost conversations because video chat conversations are blended into private 1:1 chats. It’s a fucking mess of an interface. Literally everyone else does it better.

> The mobile app is especially nice.

I couldn’t give a crap about how nice the mobile app is when 99.99% of the time I’m chatting and running meetings from my laptop. I want MS to produce a 1st class productivity tool, not TikTok.

> They are constantly adding features

I don’t want new features. As I mentioned at the start, Teams already has too many features. I just want the core user experience not to suck.

> but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat

Yet text chat between people sucks and I (like 99% of Teams user base) spend more time messaging people than we do in video conferences for 500+ people.

Your shilling here really does demonstrate just how much Microsoft have swung and missed imo. Both you and Microsoft have completely lost touch with the kind of usage that most people actually need Teams to be good at. I mean yeah, some of the features you’ve described are handy in niche situations but if the average use case is appealing (and it really is in Teams) then you find yourself lusting after other solutions most of the time.

Case in point: At my company I literally pay for Slack despite also having Teams around just because Teams sucks so badly for anything non-video. I guess we could use IRC for free but Slack has better support for in lining files (better than Teams too), better support for Markdown (better than teams too), better search in chats than Teams, better ways of organising conversations. And it’s a thousand times easier to read conversations too. It’s just better in every way for messaging. And with huddle support, it’s also not better than Teams for quick voice chats too.

And if I had to drop Slack then I’d switch to Discord, IRC, XMPP or literal anything before being stuck with Teams for all our non-video communication.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#229

Post by alphager »

trixie_ wrote: post #226
laumars wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine if your chat UI doesn’t totally suck for 99.9% of the other use cases. I’d readily take the additional pain of switching applications if it means I don’t have to deal with Teams for chat. Also all video conferencing and chat applications support sharing files. This isn’t some unheard of feature that Microsoft have pioneered. It’s been possible since the BBS days. It’s possible in XMPP and IRC. It’s poss…

You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable. The mobile app is especially nice. I can carry a meeting from my phone to my desktop without skipping a beat. They are constantly adding features and polishing, but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat. Yes the app is relatively new compared to slack but improving quickly, for example the last update - https://techcommunity.micro…

> You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable.

Usable is in the eye of the beholder.

Usable as in "I can get a video call going and can send chat messages and files": true.

Usable as in "Easy to use, frustration-free to use, easy to discover functionality": false.

It's an incredible slow application for chat. I don't particularly care if it's just bad programming or an overuse of animations, but it shouldn't feel slow on a beefy computer. Mobile is even worse on a midrange android.

No easy way to quote or forward messages, the stupid distinction between teams channels that have threaded messaging and chat that doesn't, intermittent problems loading images; I could go on for hours.

Re: Simplicity of IRC

#230

Post by lillecarl »

fivea wrote: post #113
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more, I think bash is a horrifically bad programming language. Honestly I'm incredibly surprised anyone could compare PowerShell and bash and think that PowerShell is the arcane one.

> I couldn't disagree more, I think bash is a horrifically bad programming language. Bash is described as a "command language" and not a programming language per se. Bash is what you use to type in commands, and automate said commands if you need to whip out a quick script that runs what you would otherwise run manually. Bash, scripting-wise, is command line glue. If all you want to do is run commands with some logic…

> If all you want to do is run commands with some logic, PowerShell is simply dreadful and outright developer-hostile. I doubt there is a single person on earth who uses PowerShell as a command shell like Bash is used.

Expand your views. Everyone aren't you, didn't learn the same things as you and understand different things than you.

I learned some C++ as my first language, therefore I got stuck in an object oriented mindset, this translates really well to PowerShell and really poorly to bash. The thing where everything is text doesn't make sense, text isn't stable and everyone will write their own partially broken parsing implementation. In PowerShell they try to make everything an object, with type checking and other goodies, solid autocomplete for scripts being one.

In PowerShell I can deserialise JSON and perform CRUD operations on the data easily.

I'd say powershell is outright developer friendly as it brings a production grade language to the scripting table.

If powershell could parse bash completion files and integrate sudo better I'd use it as a command shell on all platforms, which right now are limited to MacOS and Linux.

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