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Slack client for the terminal

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Re: Slack client for the terminal

#91

Post by rspeer »

zzzcpan wrote: post #83
solarkraft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IRC solves these problems via things like bots and bouncers. Although running always connected irssi client [1] in a screen [2] on a server is probably the easiest way to achieve it. [1] https://irssi.org/ [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

And other platforms solve this problem by having history as a built-in feature, which apparently IRC can never get due to inertia.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#92

Post by tomjakubowski »

rrggrr wrote: post #49
typon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh c'mon. Slack absolutely destroys IRC in terms of usability. And that's what ends up counting in the end.

Slack is barely useable, and I use it every day. Grief includes: - Huge, rigid, unskinnable UI. - Difficult, multi-step access to configurations and settings. - No OS integration therefore no desktop automation. I probably should have stuck with Hipchat, but I jumped on the Slack bandwagon along with everyone else.

What skinning features would you like to see in Slack? You can at least set color schemes to help visually distinguish workspaces.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#93

Post by rspeer »

kqr wrote: post #79
zitterbewegung wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I fail to see how those things should be part of the protocol. That's like complaining HTTP doesn't support tags for your bookmarks. It's so out of scope. Unless, of course, you are talking about a user-friendly service offering IRC access to those who do not want to set up their own clients. So, something like IRCCloud, which does exist, fyi.

Okay. So why isn't IRCCloud better than Slack?

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#95

Post by squeaky-clean »

always_good wrote: post #86
pimeys wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> push notifications, and offline message history, and a mobile client https://irccloud.com has all these, done really well. Offline message history you get also by running a server somewhere and just having an irssi in a screen/tmux. Still my favorite protocol and I have some channels that I consider to be my favorite social network for about 10-15 years already.

I pay for irccloud, but most people don't. It's annoying trying to talk to someone who disconnects when they shut their laptop and will never receive your message. Not very good tooling to build a community or relationships, that's for sure. Having to pay for basic features that competitors like slack/discord have is exactly why the slack community for something is often much bigger these days. Even the larger commun…

Great point. You can add these features for yourself with IRC, but Slack guarantees that the other party also has those features.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#97

Post by rockostrich »

ch4s3 wrote: post #7
sotojuan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the amount of users who don't care or notice performance or memory usage issues is immensely greater than the amount who cares.

IMO that's a poor excuse, and leaves open a lot of room for competition. There's a lot of hubris in assuming their position as a market leader is unassailable.

Hipchat, Facebook's Workplace, and whatever Microsoft's service is are all competitors but I don't think any of them are serious. Hipchat is probably the biggest competitor, but that's because it was around before Slack.

When there's a serious competitor in the space, then I'm sure they'll start caring. For now, I don't think anything else is close.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#98

Post by ch4s3 »

DanHulton wrote: post #11
ch4s3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that's a poor excuse, and leaves open a lot of room for competition. There's a lot of hubris in assuming their position as a market leader is unassailable.

There's also a fair amount of hubris in assuming that assuming that you know the market better than the market leader. They're killing it for a reason, and it just may be that the market they're targeting cares more about the app Just Working than about the RAM consumption.

> assuming that you know the market better than the market leader.

I never made that claim.

> They're killing it for a reason

Sure, but who knows what that reason really is. I've gone through numerous cycles of "best chat app ever", and they're pretty much all in the dustbin now. I just don't see anything about Slack that makes it any better than several alternatives other than the number of users. In fact it's objectively worse than alternatives in several ways. The video and regular calling for example is pretty terrible on anything less than a high speed internet connection. In general the app often fails to load on weak WIFI. I can still use Skype, Discord, Gittr, Facebook Messenger, Signal, et.al. on coffeeshop wifi, but not Slack. You don't need to be a genius to see that this is a problem.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#99

Post by ch4s3 »

Spivak wrote: post #15
ch4s3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that's a poor excuse, and leaves open a lot of room for competition. There's a lot of hubris in assuming their position as a market leader is unassailable.

Sure, but who buys into a messaging platform because the client makes more efficient use of resources? Don't get me wrong, it's on the list of priorities somewhere but the decision to go one platform over another will be made miles above.

My criticism isn't just about RAM use. Slack is plain unusable on weak WIFI or slow connections. It also tolerates interruptions in connectivity very poorly. Video calling is more often than not terrible, and it has about the worst screen sharing experience I'm aware of at the moment.

If I were starting a new company, I wouldn't use Slack again.

Re: Slack client for the terminal

#100

Post by derefr »

zzzcpan wrote: post #83
solarkraft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IRC solves these problems via things like bots and bouncers. Although running always connected irssi client [1] in a screen [2] on a server is probably the easiest way to achieve it. [1] https://irssi.org/ [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

IRC doesn't solve those problems; individual users solve those problems on top of IRC (and usually not very well.)

A proper open-ecosystem solution would involve network-level history-storage-and-retrieval nodes (basically archival peers in the IRC protocol), and additions to the protocol to direct archive-access queries to those nodes.

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