Live data from Hacker News

RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

github.com

71–80 of 116 posts

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#71
post #24

So you set this up and you use it for a few hours and everyone on your team is like hey this is kinda cool. * a month or so passes * Now everyone is invested in the tool and since the expectations have been set by things like Slack they expect integrations to work flawlessly, search to be infinitely fast, 99% uptime, Google OpenID authentication, and a slew of other features and before you know it you have someone sp…

That also happened in transportation: Ferrari set the expectations so high that nobody rides bikes anymore.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#73
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any sensible, albeit less popular, modern equivalents to XMPP?

IRC is better and actually more popular. IRC solved the problem of instant messaging over 20 years ago, and solved it very well. This is a problem that everyone and their mother attempts to re-solve and they always end up with a solution that's inferior to IRC. Just deploy an IRC server folks!

IRC and XMPP have the same weakness: no server side persistence.

Don't answer "bouncers" for IRC. It is an ugly hack. With XMPP the server MAY provide history, which makes it unreliable.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#74
I've been building https://github.com/mattfeldman/nullchat, a meteor chat application as part of a commit-a-day pledge of working with meteor.

I think the reason there are a few of these popping up is that it's a lot of fun to build a chat application with meteor. I never intended to be a 'clone' of slack as as much as rocketchat or spacetalk.

I've been running it for a small group (~10 active daily users) for about 6 months - it has more social features like rich embeds, mentions, notifications, sms gateway, giphy search etc.

Demo Instance: http://nullchat.space

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC solved basic communication, but the necessity of bots for things like authentication for usernames, logging, and retaining permissions are inelegant kludges, in my opinion. If XMPP has problems, so does IRC.

I don't think it'd be very difficult to set up some sort of web UI for account creation, combined with existing in-client features for usernames/passwords. That'd be more worthwhile than building a new solution from scratch. IRC has advantages over XMPP by having a much wider variety of clients and the fact that you can create your own integrations for things like build automation in a very short period of time thank…

Yeah, I agree with you. Some autocracy and curation could really make a nice ircd + bot + UI set of utilities.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is better and actually more popular. IRC solved the problem of instant messaging over 20 years ago, and solved it very well. This is a problem that everyone and their mother attempts to re-solve and they always end up with a solution that's inferior to IRC. Just deploy an IRC server folks!

IRC and XMPP have the same weakness: no server side persistence. Don't answer "bouncers" for IRC. It is an ugly hack. With XMPP the server MAY provide history, which makes it unreliable.

Bouncers. They aren't an ugly hack, are easy to deploy, and make the experience way better. I'd prefer to host that sort of thing on my own infra, too.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#77

There's a link to an "online demo" but then it asks for your login info or for you to register. That isn't really a demo then, is it?

That's the brick wall I hit too. I'm not giving them my email address for a demo, and I'm not logging in with a social media service. I suppose I could download it myself and try it out that way, but that's a ton of effort for something I may not even want in the end. Rocket.Chat devs, if you're listening, please provide a way to demo the program without giving up real information.

Agreed. If you still want to use it however just enter somerandomstring@mailcatch.com and then check the mail at http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/. Very useful when you want to bypass such useless logins, just know that the mail is public.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you can't run slack because your company doesn't allow chat services that are externally hosted? EDIT: This seems like something that never gets brought up in any discussion of Slack. No company I have worked for would have allowed an externally hosted chat service. Have I just been unlucky, or is it just the people in my situation never speak up?

Unlucky. We used Slack at the last three companies I worked for.

You can't be a very loyal employee given that Slack has been out for less than 2 years.

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the brick wall I hit too. I'm not giving them my email address for a demo, and I'm not logging in with a social media service. I suppose I could download it myself and try it out that way, but that's a ton of effort for something I may not even want in the end. Rocket.Chat devs, if you're listening, please provide a way to demo the program without giving up real information.

Agreed. If you still want to use it however just enter somerandomstring@mailcatch.com and then check the mail at http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/ . Very useful when you want to bypass such useless logins, just know that the mail is public.

Thanks, I didn't want to deal with one of those mailinator-type accounts but this is even easier. Adding it to my "cool tools" bin. :)

Re: RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor

#80
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also letschat: http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ Dunno why people tend to flock over to the propietary option though. :(

> people tend to flock over to the propietary option Because it Just Works(tm) and there's no fiddling or faffing about necessary. I'm all for [FL]OSS applications, but sometimes proprietary solutions, even if they do the same task, are just easier to use and integrate (both technically and bureaucratically)

In the case of something like Slack though, there's a huge business risk: Storing your confidential internal discussions with a random startup of questionable security practice.
Post reply on HN