Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 624 posts

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#221

Post by s73v3r_ »

komon wrote: post #104
bramd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's a thought: how about you write a native app for each platform? I can guarantee that the hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers working on AppKit and Windows APIs are a lot better at getting this to work than your team. Not just that, but it took them months to implement some (mind you, still not all) features that are useful for blind users that someone already did in a userscript in a few days. So yeah, I…

> it took them months to implement some (mind you, still not all) features that are useful for blind users that someone already did in a userscript in a few days A userscript hammered out in a few days is not really that comparable to incorporating accessibility in a flexible and sound way across a codebase. Where one is dependent on the current representation and types of features in the app, the other touches prett…

The scale of work would be a lot, lot, lot smaller if they had made native apps to start, and could use the built in accessibility stuff instead of having to reinvent the wheel.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#222

Post by tannhaeuser »

morganvachon wrote: post #165
castis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not basically electron apps. they _are_ electron apps. And it's completely absurd that mine is currently using 1514MB of memory. If I weren't required to use Slack on a day-to-day basis, I absolutely wouldn't solely on principle.

Indeed, the Windows app is horrid. One of our older workstations is a quad core i5 with 8GB, nothing special but no slouch either, and the Slack app completely chokes that machine. The employee has to run Slack on her iPhone to be able to get regular work done throughout the day. On our newer workstations it's not quite as bad but it's still noticeable. Our oldest in-service machine is a Core i7 laptop I use when I'm…

Out of interest, what's your concern with Skype? After a hiatus of ten years, I'm using it currently for a customer, and, maybe apart from cheesy emoticons and space inefficiency, so far it has worked well. Am I the only one to like a native (Linux) desktop client with notification integration etc. more than a bloated web/Electron app?

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#224

Post by ninjakeyboard »

zeveb wrote: post #128
castis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not basically electron apps. they _are_ electron apps. And it's completely absurd that mine is currently using 1514MB of memory. If I weren't required to use Slack on a day-to-day basis, I absolutely wouldn't solely on principle.

I just use emacs-slack[0]; my entire emacs usage is currently a fraction of yours. On X, this means emacs-slack displays images, emoji &c. just like the web or pseudo-native clients do. [0] https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

I was going to make a comment about using Slack from emacs but of course I'm not the only one. :)

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#226

Post by s73v3r_ »

panopticon wrote: post #175
sushisource wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Qt. It's harder, but not dramatically harder, than a web-based implementation.

The web-based implementation means you only have one codebase for both Slack in the browser and Slack in Electron. So adding Qt in addition to their browser client means they have two disparate clients instead of one client (plus Electron glue code).

So what? You're saying that like it's this terrible thing. It's not. Especially because, as has been shown, Electron apps are extremely sorely lacking in things like accessibility.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#227

Post by taneq »

milesvp wrote: post #183
Hello71 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assuming this claim is valid, that it took "few days" to implement what took them "months", then they could rewrite the entire user script from scratch every time a change is made, and this could be repeated dozens of times , which, assuming major UI changes are made once every few months, would take several years.

But, but, but, then I'd have to touch the same code twice... /s There is definitely a poison in our profession, I definitely have to fight the urge to make sure no future changes will break something, instead of just budgeting time to fix breaking changes later. Especially since no one seems to remember when we all agree something doesn't need to be bullet proof. Just today there was an expression of disbelief when I…

Any extra engineering time spent on something beyond that required to make sure it fulfils its purpose is wasted. It's like the old quote about Formula 1 cars: The perfect Formula 1 car crosses the finish line in first place, then falls apart. If it doesn't cross the finish line in first place, it's too light. If it doesn't fall apart the moment it crosses the finish line, it's too heavy.

(Note that 'purpose' might be 'allow us to process this one batch of files' or it might be 'provide a stable, maintainable infrastructure for our product for the next 20 years'. It's just important not to lose sight of that purpose either way!)

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#228

Post by azangru »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #146
Froyoh wrote: post #63

Time to use Discord

Discord has all the same problems Slack does. It's a proprietary VC-funded app without a sustainable business model.

What's Discord’s business model? Slack has a paid-for tier, but I haven’t seen anything like that on Discord.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#229

Post by blindgeek »

bramd wrote: post #62
saagarjha wrote: post #11

I'm very disappointed to see that Slack has decided to go the way of every other messaging service and move away from decentralized and standardized protocols towards those that are walled and proprietary. > We are focused on making Slack accessible to all people. Over the past year, we've made great progress in improving both the keyboard and screen reading experiences in Slack. We know many users have been relying…

> Here's a thought: how about you write a native app for each platform? I can guarantee that the hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers working on AppKit and Windows APIs are a lot better at getting this to work than your team. Not just that, but it took them months to implement some (mind you, still not all) features that are useful for blind users that someone already did in a userscript in a few days. So yeah, I…

So much this! I happen to be a blind software developer who has had just this sort of experience in years gone by. Web apps mean that you are at the mercy of the developers. Something can work one day and break the next. This is even more true for blind people than it is for the general public. Even if there is accessibility testing, I doubt that it covers my particular toolstack. I'm on Linux. So I'm doubly a niche user.

The web (and web apps) are all about providing an experience. I don't want an experience, I want a reliable tool.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#230

Post by s73v3r_ »

cyphar wrote: post #70
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

"There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc."

How does that translate to superior communication between my coworkers and I? Most of that stuff does not matter to people.

Post reply on HN