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> Is that true from a user's perspective? It is for this user. > What would Slack gain by integrating better with my Mac? Far better resource management, one

by _jal 10y ago

> Is that true from a user's perspective? It is for this user. > What would Slack gain by integrating better with my Mac? Far better resource management, one would hope, for starters. As the article pointed out, when you're measuring your IRC client's memory use in hundreds of megs, there's a problem. It isn't uncommon for me to need to choose which "essential" apps to turn off to get something done on a maxed-out MBP. So Slack gets turned off, and maybe someone gets annoyed that I don't respond to something, while I run a few VMs in Slack's former memory space. As far as other things, well, using a platform's capabilities as appropriate is generally considered good form - HCI concerns, and, generally, just people like things to be consistent. I don't know why we're supposed to forget this now. I personally don't care if Electron goes away or what, but to the extent that I'm forced to run Slack by my cow-orkers' choices, it sure would be nice if it were less of a bucket of ass.

ballenf 10y ago
Finally an argument that is concrete and understandable! Seriously, this is the first comment I've read that is tangible as opposed to theoretical. All the other complaints are on the basis of being morally offended by the ratio of resource usage vs. application functionality. The nice thing about slack is that it will run about anywhere. The app on my phone magically knows if the app is not running on my laptop and will then and only then send me notifications. But, I'm not suggesting this as a solution for you -- best productivity killer I know is having to pay attention to yet another device while trying to get work done. Depends on your environment, but I have of one very effective and successful coworker who just flat out refuses to use Slack. The number of companies where that is acceptable is probably limited. Unfortunately.
abdulkareemsn 10y ago
Recently I was doing some mean stack development ram was maxing out 8 GB and system was struggling to run smoothly Mongo alone was hogging around 1.5 GB and webpack was hogging 1 GB there are three seperate expressjs servers hogging 500 mb each And then there was slack
apetresc 10y ago
> I personally don't care if Electron goes away or what, but to the extent that I'm forced to run Slack by my cow-orkers' choices, it sure would be nice if it were less of a bucket of ass. For what it's worth, since you seem to like IRC clients so much better, Slack has a built-in IRC bridge: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-t.... It works just fine, in my experience.
- mikejmoffitt 10y ago
  From experience, using the bridge means pinging the admin on slack about it, and convincing them that it's even worth doing, and then being stuck in "The IRC Room", instead of the others rooms in which people are actually communicating.
  - abalashov 10y ago
    Allow me to humbly suggest: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack I use it extensively for everyday Slack, where I don't care much about inline media and inline formatting. And for a text client, weechat + this plugin handle it pretty gracefully.
baddox 10y ago
> when you're measuring your IRC client's memory use in hundreds of megs, there's a problem. Not really, unless you're using most of your RAM or you treat this as a fundamental principle. I've never checked my Slack RAM usage, and I'm sure it's higher than if they built a great native app, but it's also never had any performance problem with Slack or any other application (okay, except for Eclipse, but I stopped using that when Android Studio came out). > It isn't uncommon for me to need to choose which "essential" apps to turn off to get something done on a maxed-out MBP And there's the key. You have a very specific use case that is probably extremely rare. I'm a full-time developer and as far as I know I've never been low on RAM on my first generation Retina MBP.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  People are less likely to be spinning up vms but may have far less ram to start with and the more apps they use that are wasteful of power and ram the more likely this becomes an issue for them. It is truly strange to hear being resource constrained being described as a special case in computing.
  - Volt 10y ago
    Last time I taught undergrads (last semester) their computers were far from anything as good as we'd have. If I asked them to run anything remotely demanding, it really taxed their laptops. We really do need to be more mindful of resource usage. I'd rather write my own lightweight clone of something I want than use an Electron-based hog. There are menubar-only apps that come with an entire Electron dependency.
  - baddox 10y ago
    Why is that strange for personal computer usage? How common do you think it is for users to experience a performance problem caused by low memory? I'm genuinely surprised that we could apparently have such opposing intuitions. My intuition is that it is exceedingly rare.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
mcgrath_sh 10y ago
I know I am really late to this, but one of the things I have been meaning to try is running Electron apps that have Web Apps with [Fluid](http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com). I think this may give me the perks without some of the drawbacks. I am not really sure, but it is an experiment I would like to try out.
- hawkins 10y ago
  I've never heard of Fluid before, but it seems to be a glorified shortcut with minor features such as notification badges. I really can't tell how this can integrate with Electron at all. Electron would have you write a web app and package it as an app installed to your Applications folder just like any native app. You'll write this code in JS, HTML, CSS and use Electron APIs. Fluid also would have you write this in JS, HTML, CSS but use Fluid APIs instead. The two compete for the same role in that sense.
  - tjl 10y ago
    With Fluid, you don't do anything from the web developer's prospective. The Fluid app just packages a Web site as a separate application. So, what this means that any user can take a Web site and make that a separate app if they want it.

by _jal 10y ago

ballenf 10y ago

Finally an argument that is concrete and understandable! Seriously, this is the first comment I've read that is tangible as opposed to theoretical. All the other complaints are on the basis of being morally offended by the ratio of resource usage vs. application functionality. The nice thing about slack is that it will run about anywhere. The app on my phone magically knows if the app is not running on my laptop and will then and only then send me notifications. But, I'm not suggesting this as a solution for you -- best productivity killer I know is having to pay attention to yet another device while trying to get work done. Depends on your environment, but I have of one very effective and successful coworker who just flat out refuses to use Slack. The number of companies where that is acceptable is probably limited. Unfortunately.

abdulkareemsn 10y ago

Recently I was doing some mean stack development ram was maxing out 8 GB and system was struggling to run smoothly Mongo alone was hogging around 1.5 GB and webpack was hogging 1 GB there are three seperate expressjs servers hogging 500 mb each And then there was slack

apetresc 10y ago

> I personally don't care if Electron goes away or what, but to the extent that I'm forced to run Slack by my cow-orkers' choices, it sure would be nice if it were less of a bucket of ass. For what it's worth, since you seem to like IRC clients so much better, Slack has a built-in IRC bridge: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-t.... It works just fine, in my experience.

mikejmoffitt 10y ago
From experience, using the bridge means pinging the admin on slack about it, and convincing them that it's even worth doing, and then being stuck in "The IRC Room", instead of the others rooms in which people are actually communicating.
- abalashov 10y ago
  Allow me to humbly suggest: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack I use it extensively for everyday Slack, where I don't care much about inline media and inline formatting. And for a text client, weechat + this plugin handle it pretty gracefully.

baddox 10y ago

> when you're measuring your IRC client's memory use in hundreds of megs, there's a problem. Not really, unless you're using most of your RAM or you treat this as a fundamental principle. I've never checked my Slack RAM usage, and I'm sure it's higher than if they built a great native app, but it's also never had any performance problem with Slack or any other application (okay, except for Eclipse, but I stopped using that when Android Studio came out). > It isn't uncommon for me to need to choose which "essential" apps to turn off to get something done on a maxed-out MBP And there's the key. You have a very specific use case that is probably extremely rare. I'm a full-time developer and as far as I know I've never been low on RAM on my first generation Retina MBP.

michaelmrose 10y ago
People are less likely to be spinning up vms but may have far less ram to start with and the more apps they use that are wasteful of power and ram the more likely this becomes an issue for them. It is truly strange to hear being resource constrained being described as a special case in computing.
- Volt 10y ago
  Last time I taught undergrads (last semester) their computers were far from anything as good as we'd have. If I asked them to run anything remotely demanding, it really taxed their laptops. We really do need to be more mindful of resource usage. I'd rather write my own lightweight clone of something I want than use an Electron-based hog. There are menubar-only apps that come with an entire Electron dependency.
- baddox 10y ago
  Why is that strange for personal computer usage? How common do you think it is for users to experience a performance problem caused by low memory? I'm genuinely surprised that we could apparently have such opposing intuitions. My intuition is that it is exceedingly rare.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago

mcgrath_sh 10y ago

I know I am really late to this, but one of the things I have been meaning to try is running Electron apps that have Web Apps with [Fluid](http://fluidapp.com http://fluidapp.com). I think this may give me the perks without some of the drawbacks. I am not really sure, but it is an experiment I would like to try out.

hawkins 10y ago
I've never heard of Fluid before, but it seems to be a glorified shortcut with minor features such as notification badges. I really can't tell how this can integrate with Electron at all. Electron would have you write a web app and package it as an app installed to your Applications folder just like any native app. You'll write this code in JS, HTML, CSS and use Electron APIs. Fluid also would have you write this in JS, HTML, CSS but use Fluid APIs instead. The two compete for the same role in that sense.
- tjl 10y ago
  With Fluid, you don't do anything from the web developer's prospective. The Fluid app just packages a Web site as a separate application. So, what this means that any user can take a Web site and make that a separate app if they want it.