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> Well, to the extent that these costs degrade the user experience, I'm not sure they really are externalizing them. Presumably they pay this cost in the form o
by bhauer 10y ago
> Well, to the extent that these costs degrade the user experience, I'm not sure they really are externalizing them. Presumably they pay this cost in the form of decreased user satisfaction. It's just that this is a cost they are willing to pay.
Precisely. I don't use Slack in part because its desktop application is irrationally bloated for its use-case. Although I have other reasons as well, they are enduring a cost--a small one to be sure, but presumably non-trivial in aggregate--in people refusing to use their service in part because their desktop application is poor.
But I do agree with the general emotion underlying the frustration of "externalities" here. As someone who advocates for high-performance and efficient web applications, I have toyed with the question of whether developers should confront the morality of wasting energy by having selected poor/low-performance platforms. Put in a somewhat comedic tone: low-performance software contributes to climate change.
- nojvek 10y agoBy walking just one day a year than taking my car, I can offset the electricity consumed by my laptop. You do have a point though. You make a difference where you can.
- pharrington 10y agoThe problem is that despite how good it feels, individuals simply optimizing their individual activity does not scale to the societal scope. Post-agrarian humans literally behave and think via shared infrastructure. The only way individuals can make lasting improvements to society is to improve the infrastructure.
- Rapzid 10y agoIndividuals changing their behaviour can lead to societal change though.
- pharrington 10y agoYes, but you are talking about contingencies. Optimism over dice rolls cannot excuse wasteful systems.
- jancsika 10y ago> Put in a somewhat comedic tone: low-performance software contributes to climate change. Number of developers who would donate the increased efficiency to "idle": $denominator. Number of developers who would fill the increased efficiency with more triangles: $numerator. I'd argue $numerator is sufficiently large that the premise of your joke doesn't hold.
- petre 10y agoWhy they haven't made Slack a web based chat app like Discord or Wire or even Skype is beyond me. I don't even use their native apps, just open a tab in my browser and run the corresponding web app.
- jnwatson 10y agoThey already do, just not on mobile.
- copperx 10y agoI don't get it. If slack.com is a web-based chat, why doesn't the OP open Slack on his existing instance of Chrome?
- pseudalopex 10y ago"Along with the features available in your browser, the app loads your conversations more quickly, gives you more control over notifications, and has better support for multiple teams."[1] Also, the app gets its own entry in the task switcher. [1] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/207677868-Slack-for-Mac https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/207677868-Slack-for...
- aoeusnth1 10y agoCouldn't they just pay to offset the performance cost of their application? I doubt the cost would be much compared to the development difference.