4 ms·

Again, a product that advertises being built on Go as if that's a feature. I have nothing against Go, but that's weird -- no one cares what Slack is written in.

justinsb 10y ago
Personally I care about the security of the server (is it written in a language that historically has a good or poor track record), and I care a great deal about the client. The Slack client regularly pauses for me while I am typing, randomly refreshes, and generally feels sluggish. Those aren't things I associate with Go. That said, I think this particular implementation's client is also written in Javascript, so I don't know that it will have a particular advantage there. But an open source implementation at least won't block alternative clients (e.g. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fast-beautiful-macos-native-slack-app https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fas...), in a way that the Slack Terms of Service would seem to do.
- kevan 10y ago
  The desktop clients are built on Electron [1]. I've been using it for about 3 weeks and there's been a few times where performance issues were noticeable but not bad enough for me to start digging in the code to find the issue. Overall I think it's a well put together app, but people who hate anything built on Electron will probably have bad things to say about it. [1] https://github.com/mattermost/desktop https://github.com/mattermost/desktop
  - mcpherrinm 10y ago
    Slack's performance also depends a ton on how much your teams are using it, and how many teams you're on. "reactjis" are one of the worst offenders -- I've had a channel open with some people messing around with them, and it'll be casually consuming 30% of cpu and 3 gigs of ram on my top-of-the-line macbook. I would have long since deleted an IRC client that was such a poor performer, but unfortunately there's not any good/complete 3rd party slack clients.
    - jhgg 10y ago
      Lots of poorly written webapps give Electron a bad name. Slack, unfortunately does have it's performance issues, but there are other popular chat apps written in Electron that are very performant, even on large teams.
    - zwily 10y ago
      You can just use an IRC client and the IRC bridge...
- chubs 10y ago
  Hey - i made that kickstarter! Unfortunately it doesn't seem there was much interest so it went nowhere. I still think it's regrettable how resource-hungry the official client is, but doesn't seem that too many people share that opinion.
- addelindh 10y ago
  I audited Mattermost 1.x through 3.x a while back. Had some issues but everything was fixed smoothly and from 3.x it is actually really good. Slides from my talk on it here: https://speakerdeck.com/addelindh/hacking-mattermost-an-assessment-of-an-open-source-messaging-platform-for-hipsters-security-fest-2016 https://speakerdeck.com/addelindh/hacking-mattermost-an-asse...
  - it33 10y ago
    Thanks @addelindh! Really love your work. You helped us a ton, highly appreciated!
    - addelindh 10y ago
      Thanks yourself, you and your team is a pleasure to work with.
qq66 10y ago
I believe you host the product yourself -- so if you are going to have to deploy it, modify it, etc., you'll want to know what stack it's built on.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Yep. I still hesitate to even consider deploying rails or node.js applications. It's just too many things to learn and keep up to date with. Of course if you already develop in rails or node.js or run some other services already that might not be an issue. But to me - unless it is apt-gettable - a standalone binary (typical go), war or jar file has a huge advantage.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    Mattermost actually is apt-gettable if you install it alongside GitLab CE with GitLab's omnibus package¹. 1: https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      And it's written in golang, not rails or node.js
bryanlarsen 10y ago
That's just a throw away sentence in the article to emphasize its open source nature. All the main points of the article are bolded subheadings.
robbyt 10y ago
I disagree. The language the app is written in speaks a lot about the culture of the software. If it was Java, I would expect something very different than if it was written in PHP. If you think they're all the same, then maybe you need to get some more real world experience.
- Kudos 10y ago
  Slack is written in PHP, I guess people care more when they have to host it themselves. I wonder whether the stories of Slack's codebase being a hot mess are the real reason it's still not available to self-host.
  - ec109685 10y ago
    Its realtime server is Java though.
rch 10y ago
Implementation details can be important features of open source products.
it33 10y ago
This is a really good question, I'll try to answer from different perspectives (and hopefully others can chime in with what I missed). 1) For End Users and Developers, Golang can mean fewer bugs Golang is a "type-safe" language, meaning that all the programming code is written to be explicit and consistent, versus "untyped" languages like PHP or JavaScript, where programming is more implicit with many different ways to say the same thing. It's easier for software tools to automatically analyze type-safe languages and find bugs. And those languages are also easier to read and review--since there's only one way to express something--and that helps too. 2) For System Administrators, Golang means easier install and management Golang is a "complied language", meaning that after the programming is done, a single file is produced. So a System Administrator just installs one file and Mattermost works. To upgrade, they just change that one file. Easy! Languages like PHP and JavaScript are "interpreted languages", meaning that a System Administrator would need to download lots and lots of files, install one or more programs to interpret those files, and hope that nothing breaks. When it's time to upgrade, she's got to make sure all the files and interpreters on her server are exactly the right version. It can be a nightmare to maintain. 3) So what's the trade-off? The trade-off with Golang is that it takes more work to learn than PHP and JavaScript. The programming language isn't as forgiving to new programmers. You need to say things exactly the right way or the program won't even start, whereas PHP and JavaScript if you say things "kind of right" and things will "kind of work". Does this help?

justinsb 10y ago

Personally I care about the security of the server (is it written in a language that historically has a good or poor track record), and I care a great deal about the client. The Slack client regularly pauses for me while I am typing, randomly refreshes, and generally feels sluggish. Those aren't things I associate with Go. That said, I think this particular implementation's client is also written in Javascript, so I don't know that it will have a particular advantage there. But an open source implementation at least won't block alternative clients (e.g. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fast-beautiful-macos-native-slack-app https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2137936555/taut-the-fas...), in a way that the Slack Terms of Service would seem to do.

kevan 10y ago
The desktop clients are built on Electron [1]. I've been using it for about 3 weeks and there's been a few times where performance issues were noticeable but not bad enough for me to start digging in the code to find the issue. Overall I think it's a well put together app, but people who hate anything built on Electron will probably have bad things to say about it. [1] https://github.com/mattermost/desktop https://github.com/mattermost/desktop
- mcpherrinm 10y ago
  Slack's performance also depends a ton on how much your teams are using it, and how many teams you're on. "reactjis" are one of the worst offenders -- I've had a channel open with some people messing around with them, and it'll be casually consuming 30% of cpu and 3 gigs of ram on my top-of-the-line macbook. I would have long since deleted an IRC client that was such a poor performer, but unfortunately there's not any good/complete 3rd party slack clients.
  - jhgg 10y ago
    Lots of poorly written webapps give Electron a bad name. Slack, unfortunately does have it's performance issues, but there are other popular chat apps written in Electron that are very performant, even on large teams.
  - zwily 10y ago
    You can just use an IRC client and the IRC bridge...
chubs 10y ago
Hey - i made that kickstarter! Unfortunately it doesn't seem there was much interest so it went nowhere. I still think it's regrettable how resource-hungry the official client is, but doesn't seem that too many people share that opinion.
addelindh 10y ago
I audited Mattermost 1.x through 3.x a while back. Had some issues but everything was fixed smoothly and from 3.x it is actually really good. Slides from my talk on it here: https://speakerdeck.com/addelindh/hacking-mattermost-an-assessment-of-an-open-source-messaging-platform-for-hipsters-security-fest-2016 https://speakerdeck.com/addelindh/hacking-mattermost-an-asse...
- it33 10y ago
  Thanks @addelindh! Really love your work. You helped us a ton, highly appreciated!
  - addelindh 10y ago
    Thanks yourself, you and your team is a pleasure to work with.

qq66 10y ago

I believe you host the product yourself -- so if you are going to have to deploy it, modify it, etc., you'll want to know what stack it's built on.

reitanqild 10y ago
Yep. I still hesitate to even consider deploying rails or node.js applications. It's just too many things to learn and keep up to date with. Of course if you already develop in rails or node.js or run some other services already that might not be an issue. But to me - unless it is apt-gettable - a standalone binary (typical go), war or jar file has a huge advantage.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Mattermost actually is apt-gettable if you install it alongside GitLab CE with GitLab's omnibus package¹. 1: https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    And it's written in golang, not rails or node.js

bryanlarsen 10y ago

That's just a throw away sentence in the article to emphasize its open source nature. All the main points of the article are bolded subheadings.

robbyt 10y ago

I disagree. The language the app is written in speaks a lot about the culture of the software. If it was Java, I would expect something very different than if it was written in PHP. If you think they're all the same, then maybe you need to get some more real world experience.

Kudos 10y ago
Slack is written in PHP, I guess people care more when they have to host it themselves. I wonder whether the stories of Slack's codebase being a hot mess are the real reason it's still not available to self-host.
- ec109685 10y ago
  Its realtime server is Java though.

rch 10y ago

Implementation details can be important features of open source products.

it33 10y ago

This is a really good question, I'll try to answer from different perspectives (and hopefully others can chime in with what I missed). 1) For End Users and Developers, Golang can mean fewer bugs Golang is a "type-safe" language, meaning that all the programming code is written to be explicit and consistent, versus "untyped" languages like PHP or JavaScript, where programming is more implicit with many different ways to say the same thing. It's easier for software tools to automatically analyze type-safe languages and find bugs. And those languages are also easier to read and review--since there's only one way to express something--and that helps too. 2) For System Administrators, Golang means easier install and management Golang is a "complied language", meaning that after the programming is done, a single file is produced. So a System Administrator just installs one file and Mattermost works. To upgrade, they just change that one file. Easy! Languages like PHP and JavaScript are "interpreted languages", meaning that a System Administrator would need to download lots and lots of files, install one or more programs to interpret those files, and hope that nothing breaks. When it's time to upgrade, she's got to make sure all the files and interpreters on her server are exactly the right version. It can be a nightmare to maintain. 3) So what's the trade-off? The trade-off with Golang is that it takes more work to learn than PHP and JavaScript. The programming language isn't as forgiving to new programmers. You need to say things exactly the right way or the program won't even start, whereas PHP and JavaScript if you say things "kind of right" and things will "kind of work". Does this help?