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Simple Unix Chat

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Re: Simple Unix Chat

#21

Post by lolinder »

anonym29 wrote: post #6

I understand the blog post here is about suc, and it is acknowledged immediately and honestly that the headline is slightly misleading, but there's an important message here that ultimately has nothing to do with suc. Almost all modern software is bloated to hell. The idea that one would need 1.7 million LoC for a rich chat server is absurd. To paraphrase Bill Gates, I don't think I could "spend" that many lines of c…

FWIW, most of the TypeScript lines of code are in the E2E tests[0] and the webapp dir [1], which, as the name suggests, contains "the client code for the Mattermost web app". So we should really only be counting lines of Go code.

[0] https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/e2e-tes...

[1] https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/webapp

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#22

Post by bandrami »

anonym29 wrote: post #6

I understand the blog post here is about suc, and it is acknowledged immediately and honestly that the headline is slightly misleading, but there's an important message here that ultimately has nothing to do with suc. Almost all modern software is bloated to hell. The idea that one would need 1.7 million LoC for a rich chat server is absurd. To paraphrase Bill Gates, I don't think I could "spend" that many lines of c…

I once was in a meeting about which web authentication framework to use for a site that ran so long because of bikeshedding that I implemented during the meeting and demoed at the end a solution based on the fact that HTTP already provides an authentication facility.

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#24

Post by cornel_io »

spicybright wrote: post #8

In case you're passing over this because it sounds like click bait (it KIND OF is), this was actually a good read to me. It goes over a utility called "suc" (Simple Unix Chat) that implements server functionalities from Slack, Discord, etc. using a very small codebase. The novel part is it leverages existing unix tools and methodology instead of re-inventing them. - Auth is handled by SSH. - Channels are just a file…

Slack to most end users is the client, though. As well as the admin, user management UI, scalability, webhooks, etc, absolutely none of which is handled by "you can chat with other users in Linux if you all log into the box" which every *nix has had since before most readers here were born.

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#25

Post by devmor »

wfme wrote: post #11

This is very reminiscent of the initial hn response to DropBox [0]. This is like saying that you can build a Tesla clone by attaching 3 pieces of wood together along with 4 wheels. Although it is technically cool, it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

>it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX

I strongly disagree. Slack has nearly the same UX as every chat platform of the past 2-3 decades. It's a slightly change over AOL Instant Messenger. There's also a large amount of very similar software or straight-up slack clones that are not very popular at all.

I would say what makes Slack so popular is how easy it is to set up and get running, both as a service and for every user, combined with the availability of easy integrations/plugins.

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#26

Post by peeters »

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Functionally, this is nearly the same as slack, but it's missing the aggressive venture capital funding and marketing team...

In what way is its functionality "nearly the same as Slack"? Or are people these days just using Slack as a generic term for "channel-based chat" without acknowledging the long history of chat apps? (In which case I would argue it is much closer to the functionality of IRC, if still significantly short of it).

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#27

Post by thayne »

devmor wrote: post #25
wfme wrote: post #11

This is very reminiscent of the initial hn response to DropBox [0]. This is like saying that you can build a Tesla clone by attaching 3 pieces of wood together along with 4 wheels. Although it is technically cool, it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

>it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX I strongly disagree. Slack has nearly the same UX as every chat platform of the past 2-3 decades. It's a slightly change over AOL Instant Messenger. There's also a large amount of very similar software or straight-up slack clones that are not very popular at all. I would say what makes Slack so popular is how easy it is to set up and get running, both as…

> I would say what makes Slack so popular is how easy it is to set up and get running, both as a service and for every user, combined with the availability of easy integrations/plugins

That is part of the User eXperience. I.e. UX.

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#28

Post by maxcoding »

devmor wrote: post #25
wfme wrote: post #11

This is very reminiscent of the initial hn response to DropBox [0]. This is like saying that you can build a Tesla clone by attaching 3 pieces of wood together along with 4 wheels. Although it is technically cool, it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

>it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX I strongly disagree. Slack has nearly the same UX as every chat platform of the past 2-3 decades. It's a slightly change over AOL Instant Messenger. There's also a large amount of very similar software or straight-up slack clones that are not very popular at all. I would say what makes Slack so popular is how easy it is to set up and get running, both as…

What you are describing is quite literally the UX, the user experience, and Slack overall has quite a good one. Although several of the newer features are somewhat lacking in that regard, like the threads feature.

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#29

Post by [deleted] »

devmor wrote: post #25
wfme wrote: post #11

This is very reminiscent of the initial hn response to DropBox [0]. This is like saying that you can build a Tesla clone by attaching 3 pieces of wood together along with 4 wheels. Although it is technically cool, it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

>it misses practically all of what makes Slack so popular - UX I strongly disagree. Slack has nearly the same UX as every chat platform of the past 2-3 decades. It's a slightly change over AOL Instant Messenger. There's also a large amount of very similar software or straight-up slack clones that are not very popular at all. I would say what makes Slack so popular is how easy it is to set up and get running, both as…

[deleted]

Re: Simple Unix Chat

#30

Post by 000ooo000 »

As a feat, I like this. It's cool to see what can be achieved with composition. That said, I don't care much for the comparison to Slack etc. No engineer wants to be on the hook for a bunch of things cobbled together like this in production. How are you going to hire talent? How do you test the thing? Debug it? Logs? Analytics? This piece replicates (some of) the chat functionality of Slack et al but the chat functionality is not 100% of these applications. They're built in completely different environments, and so to attack the status quo as bloated seems like some kind of warped Stockton Rush esque take on things. Don't get me wrong, there's bloat in software, but "look ma', I built a submarine from bits and pieces - told you those fancy submarines are stupid" doesn't seem like the put-down I think the author would like it to be.
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