5 ms·

TL;DR they made a modernised version of an nntp client and server ;-)

by jwildeboer 9y ago

akhilcacharya 9y ago
I mean, isn't Dropbox just prettier rsync?
- josephg 9y ago
  And Slack is a modern version of IRC :) It keep being surprised by how much a fresh coat of CSS and a mobile app can reinvigorate these old ideas. Who knew how important adding gifs and emoticons would be?
  - kuon 9y ago
    Add gif to HN you will realize how great it will become! (please don't)
  - detaro 9y ago
    I'd say history access/logging by default, easy sign-up, easy management/configuration are all way more important reasons. Someone very likely could have gotten all that working as a good product based on IRC, but they didn't. (I use IRC a lot more than Slack, but my requirements are not the same as those of a company adopting Slack)
  - tvaughan 9y ago
    https://grove.io/ https://grove.io/
    - detaro 9y ago
      Oh interesting, wasn't aware that was a thing. Sad they didn't make it.
dav 9y ago
Exactly! Sounds like Usenet.
peatmoss 9y ago
alt.religion.slack > slack Jokes aside, the article did hit the nail on the head in its critique of realtime comms. That said, there was always a subset of any team that seemed to have cold feet / anxiety / or other resistance to writing the longer-form messages of newsgroups. I think if I had to pick between shallow, but broadly used comms, and slow but heterogeneously used comms, I'd still pick the latter.
pqs 9y ago
I agree with you. I can't believe that they even wrote a new app when they could just have installed mailman, or any other mailing list server, or even a news server. If I were to create a company I would create mailing lists for discussion and a wiki for consolidation of knowledge. In my humble opinion, there is no need for new fancy apps. The tools are there. What does the new app they created provide that cannot be done with the tools I mentionned? I feel old. I'm 36 years old and I see too many articles of people discovering stuff we discussed at length in the 90s. This IRC vs Usenet discussion is an old one.

TL;DR they made a modernised version of an nntp client and server ;-)

akhilcacharya 9y ago

I mean, isn't Dropbox just prettier rsync?

josephg 9y ago
And Slack is a modern version of IRC :) It keep being surprised by how much a fresh coat of CSS and a mobile app can reinvigorate these old ideas. Who knew how important adding gifs and emoticons would be?
- kuon 9y ago
  Add gif to HN you will realize how great it will become! (please don't)
- detaro 9y ago
  I'd say history access/logging by default, easy sign-up, easy management/configuration are all way more important reasons. Someone very likely could have gotten all that working as a good product based on IRC, but they didn't. (I use IRC a lot more than Slack, but my requirements are not the same as those of a company adopting Slack)
- tvaughan 9y ago
  https://grove.io/ https://grove.io/
  - detaro 9y ago
    Oh interesting, wasn't aware that was a thing. Sad they didn't make it.

dav 9y ago

Exactly! Sounds like Usenet.

peatmoss 9y ago

alt.religion.slack > slack Jokes aside, the article did hit the nail on the head in its critique of realtime comms. That said, there was always a subset of any team that seemed to have cold feet / anxiety / or other resistance to writing the longer-form messages of newsgroups. I think if I had to pick between shallow, but broadly used comms, and slow but heterogeneously used comms, I'd still pick the latter.

pqs 9y ago

I agree with you. I can't believe that they even wrote a new app when they could just have installed mailman, or any other mailing list server, or even a news server. If I were to create a company I would create mailing lists for discussion and a wiki for consolidation of knowledge. In my humble opinion, there is no need for new fancy apps. The tools are there. What does the new app they created provide that cannot be done with the tools I mentionned? I feel old. I'm 36 years old and I see too many articles of people discovering stuff we discussed at length in the 90s. This IRC vs Usenet discussion is an old one.