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Slack client for the terminal

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Re: Slack client for the terminal

#151

Post by foobiekr »

tachyoff wrote: post #136
TickleSteve wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

functionally and computationally, the tiny C program and the java monster would be doing the same thing.... So yes, they're comparable. Choosing inefficient ways to do things (in the case of Java) is not a way to escape comparison.

You can't say "wow, look how much smaller the C program is" and then ignore why it's so much smaller in the first place (no runtime, no garbage collection, etc.) If that's the case, then we should hand-roll assembly all the time because it's "smaller". You also can't just call Java inefficient because it produces larger programs or is "slower". It's all about choosing the right tool for the job.

Perhaps Java should have been designed to scale down and not require all that stuff when perfectly reasonable applications don't need them all the time.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#152

Post by c22 »

qudat wrote: post #148
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #9

I use this personally. Its great. Hides all the cruft that people post in slack as text. I've been working on trying to extend it on the side. A chat client should not be taking over 1GB of RAM

> A chat client should not be taking over 1GB of RAM Why do you care so much about RAM usage? All this concern over RAM is completely missing the picture here. Every conversation about slack or electron people complain about RAM usage. The market could not give two shits about RAM usage so why does everyone on HN complain about it?

Probably because their $3000 desktops are grinding to a crawl under these unwieldy stacks of cruft. The market might not care but that's only because most users are too naive to realize that spending hundreds to thousands of dollars a year upgrading their phones and laptops is neither necessary nor desirable. Eventually consumers in this space will gain more awareness and these wasteful software development practices will have to end.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#153

Post by yellowapple »

qudat wrote: post #148
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #9

I use this personally. Its great. Hides all the cruft that people post in slack as text. I've been working on trying to extend it on the side. A chat client should not be taking over 1GB of RAM

> A chat client should not be taking over 1GB of RAM Why do you care so much about RAM usage? All this concern over RAM is completely missing the picture here. Every conversation about slack or electron people complain about RAM usage. The market could not give two shits about RAM usage so why does everyone on HN complain about it?

1GB of RAM is anywhere from 25-50% of the RAM available on the average new (let alone used) consumer-grade laptop. For a chat app. And that's not even factoring in the OS overhead.

That's fucking bonkers. Objectively and scientifically fucking bonkers.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#154

Post by tachyoff »

foobiekr wrote: post #151
tachyoff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't say "wow, look how much smaller the C program is" and then ignore why it's so much smaller in the first place (no runtime, no garbage collection, etc.) If that's the case, then we should hand-roll assembly all the time because it's "smaller". You also can't just call Java inefficient because it produces larger programs or is "slower". It's all about choosing the right tool for the job.

Perhaps Java should have been designed to scale down and not require all that stuff when perfectly reasonable applications don't need them all the time .

Then those "perfectly reasonable" applications are free to eschew languages like Java. People do it all the time to great success. People also use Java to great success. But that's neither here nor there. My point is that it's unfair to call Java programs bloated when the extra space is necessary to support the runtime environment that makes Java Java. I'm not arguing the merits of such a thing (indeed, swap Java with literally any other language), I just want it to be clear that C and Java programs run differently, and both languages/runtimes, such as they are, were developed at different times and to serve different purposes, and therefore it's not correct to bemoan that Java programs are larger. That's like complaining that JavaScript doesn't give you direct memory access or that assembly doesn't have classes.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#155

Post by astronautjones »

jerf wrote: post #106
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #9

I use this personally. Its great. Hides all the cruft that people post in slack as text. I've been working on trying to extend it on the side. A chat client should not be taking over 1GB of RAM

What's the advantages of using the client vs. using it as a tab in your browser? Tab in the browser seems to be working for me OK, once I figured out I could "pin" the tab in Firefox, which prevented me from accidentally closing it.

I work with three to four Adobe programs open for my workflow, even the browser version has a noticeable effect on performance. I actually run it on a $60 Amazon tablet next to my monitor (only because our organization insists on slack)

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#157

Post by antjanus »

guessmyname wrote: post #71
antjanus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it taking up that much data? I'm at 550mbs with 6 very active teams and while on voice chat. Dropped out of voice chat I'm at 340mb. Each team has 10-20 channels. I also use Discord which uses Electron and with it, I'm on 8 separate active servers with anywhere from 10-30 channels. This sits at 115mb without an issue. Can you tell me where these electron metrics come from where people have slack take up 1gb or…

> I'm at 550mbs with 6 very active teams and while on voice chat. Dropped out of voice chat I'm at 340mb That's still a lot of RAM for a chat with giant emojis. You have to consider that people reporting these issues with memory consumption are running the app in different operating system than yours. Maybe your system is optimized. I just checked my co-workers computer and his main Slack process is at +97MB but ther…

I checked. I'm at 360mb for 8 separate Slack processes grouped together. I'm on Windows 10, not sure if that matters.

There are no Slack helpers.

I'm not sure why you're this adamant about it.

I still it's quite a good deal given that my Discord instance has a similar feature-set and is accessing just as many channels/servers/teams as Slack but at a third of the memory.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#158

Post by antjanus »

sitkack wrote: post #76
antjanus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it taking up that much data? I'm at 550mbs with 6 very active teams and while on voice chat. Dropped out of voice chat I'm at 340mb. Each team has 10-20 channels. I also use Discord which uses Electron and with it, I'm on 8 separate active servers with anywhere from 10-30 channels. This sits at 115mb without an issue. Can you tell me where these electron metrics come from where people have slack take up 1gb or…

Back when I used Slack, I was on 8? different slack(s)? And my memory usage was around 1.5-2GB on OSX.

Sure! I remember those days. I'm on Windows 10 and over the past year, they've tremendously improved on memory usage.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#159

Post by antjanus »

lozenge wrote: post #43
antjanus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it taking up that much data? I'm at 550mbs with 6 very active teams and while on voice chat. Dropped out of voice chat I'm at 340mb. Each team has 10-20 channels. I also use Discord which uses Electron and with it, I'm on 8 separate active servers with anywhere from 10-30 channels. This sits at 115mb without an issue. Can you tell me where these electron metrics come from where people have slack take up 1gb or…

Every Slack workspace creates an Electron instance. If you're on three workspaces, that's like running three totally separate browsers.

That's not entirely right. Each workspace is an equivalent of a tab, not a browser.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#160

Post by rspeer »

bphogan wrote: post #127
zitterbewegung wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t convince my colleagues to use IRCCloud at least people will put up with using slack. Rocketchat has much more feature parity to slack tbh. Comparing slack to IRC isn’t really fair even though they do the same thing. I have used irc and slack and slack’s ease of use is its asset. I used freenode in high school and college to teach myself scheme. The barrier to entry is not something that can be explained as ju…

Disagree about barrier to entry. I run an office hours chat for my online classes powered by IRC. I use KiwiIRC as the front-end. Students need only the web address of the web page I want them to go to. When they get there, they need only a username. No signup, no verification, none of that. They're online, getting help in seconds. Individual public channels requiring nickserv registration and all that? that's anothe…

> cherryh.freenode.net set mode +ns ##irc_can_be_easy

Some welcome message. You may be too used to IRC to recognize this, but this is frightening gibberish to 99.99% of computer users.

Also, this interface does not get you crucial features provided by other chat services, such as seeing what previous users have said.

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