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Slack client for the terminal

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Re: Slack client for the terminal

#61

Post by guessmyname »

Viper007Bond wrote: post #31
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

So we've gone from IRC which worked perfectly fine to a billion dollar business just to port that software back to the terminal, where we started out to begin with I don't understand this world any more

You can actually connect to Slack via IRC: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-t...

Unless your employer decided to disable that option because an upper manager didn't like the idea for reasons that I don't even understand. It's even more difficult when you are part of a corporation with thousands of employees that are in favor of using Slack over IRC.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#62

Post by ranza »

Karunamon wrote: post #45
brandonmenc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then everyone should feel stupid for not realizing you could make a billion dollars creating a sane sign-up and account management system for IRC.

...and push notifications, and offline message history, and a mobile client, and services that aren't hacky god-clients, and content storage, and previews/inlining, and.... About the only thing IRC has going for it is decentralization, and that's not very valuable in the market it seems. Seriously. IRC has had 30 years to get with the times. It's stagnated and been lapped by its competitors, and the efforts to improv…

sooo convor/grove? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grove.io

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#63

Post by zitterbewegung »

brandonmenc wrote: post #27
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

So we've gone from IRC which worked perfectly fine to a billion dollar business just to port that software back to the terminal, where we started out to begin with I don't understand this world any more

Well then everyone should feel stupid for not realizing you could make a billion dollars creating a sane sign-up and account management system for IRC.

Also , infinite scroll back , a standard set of easy to use clients, hosted services and API integrations.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#64

Post by tachyoff »

Barrin92 wrote: post #20

So we've gone from IRC which worked perfectly fine to a billion dollar business just to port that software back to the terminal, where we started out to begin with I don't understand this world any more

Everything old is new again. ;) Okay, that’s a bit flippant. Obviously Slack isn’t IRC (with several major differences), but I think as far as communicating with your coworkers goes, they both accomplish the task. It’s just a matter of how much you want to spend.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#65

Post by mping »

Obviously slack got something right, otherwise people would still use irc. It always amazes me how we devs fail to ack the business side of a success case as slack. And if any contender in the space fail to identify what slack got right they won't thrive.

Maybe it was the ui, or some particular features, but they did resonate with the users. And now they are the benchmark that all the others will compare to.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#66

Post by solarkraft »

chubot wrote: post #50
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

So we've gone from IRC which worked perfectly fine to a billion dollar business just to port that software back to the terminal, where we started out to begin with I don't understand this world any more

I love using Unix and the terminal, but I hate using IRC. I don't think it works "perfectly fine". I have been lurking on a few IRC channels due to my work on http://www.oilshell.org/ . Problems I noticed: - The lack of conversations/threading is really annoying. Most worthwhile IRC channels have more than one conversation going on at once. Not only do you have to untangle who's talking to who, there's no way to know…

Plus: What about a history? Do I really have to have my client running to not miss stuff? That may have technical reasons, but is inconvenient.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#67

Post by tachyoff »

Karunamon wrote: post #48
tachyoff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which usability features are they? The 3 GB of RAM usage, the battery-draining, or the culture of “always-on” availability and interruptions?

Your failure to set your coworker's expectations for your availability or the failures of organizational culture being projected onto the messaging tool are not the fault of the messaging tool.

Not only do we shape our tools, but our tools also absolutely shape us.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#68

Post by kqr »

chubot wrote: post #50
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

So we've gone from IRC which worked perfectly fine to a billion dollar business just to port that software back to the terminal, where we started out to begin with I don't understand this world any more

I love using Unix and the terminal, but I hate using IRC. I don't think it works "perfectly fine". I have been lurking on a few IRC channels due to my work on http://www.oilshell.org/ . Problems I noticed: - The lack of conversations/threading is really annoying. Most worthwhile IRC channels have more than one conversation going on at once. Not only do you have to untangle who's talking to who, there's no way to know…

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing by spending several paragraphs on the problems with the out-of-the-box experience and only one on the fact that it is an open protocol so a sufficiently technical user can fix it.

An open protocol, free choice of clients, and decentralised infrastructure is a baseline. A change is not an improvement if it removes those. (You could argue you have valid reasons to remove any of them and you'd be wrong.)

I don't see why it would be much more exhausting to use a hosted IRC service like IRCCloud to solve your problems than pick a specific alternative protocol entirely.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#69

Post by DividableMiddle »

aviv wrote: post #58
Siecje wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it sane. Why do I have to sign up for different Slack organizations and have a different password for each one? Why can't I private message someone on Slack with just a username? I think Discord does this much better.

I'm guessing because of deep technical debt from some very early decisions made.

I would assume so as well. Maybe a Slack engineer can chime in?

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#70

Post by tachyoff »

Karunamon wrote: post #53
drb91 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the fact that if you don’t respond to people contacting you you’ll get fired. As a salary you have no voice. The market simply optimizes for whatever is easiest for a ceo to install and maintain.

How is this Slack's fault, again? Or is the argument that messaging systems should be hard to install so they aren't misused? Seriously, what even is this comment chain getting at? If you work somewhere where always-on is a hard requirement, it doesn't matter what messaging system is used. Any place that would fire you for muting notifications would just as easily fire you for turning off email notifications. In shor…

I’m blaming both: I’m blaming the humans who expect it, and the billion-dollar blob of JavaScript that enables it to be so.
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