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I don't see any compelling reason to adopt IRC. It does nothing that I care about that Slack doesn't do. If Slack completely implodes, I would search for Slac

I don't see any compelling reason to adopt IRC. It does nothing that I care about that Slack doesn't do. If Slack completely implodes, I would search for Slack alternative. If IRC really was my only option, I'd use it just long enough to write a basic alternative myself that replaced or extended IRC w/ the features I really want.

blkhawk 8y ago
I don't see any compelling reason to adopt Slack. It does nothing that I care about that IRC doesn't do. If IRC completely implodes, I would run my own IRC server.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  > I would run my own IRC server That's nice for you personally, but how does running an inhouse bespoke IRC server have anything to do with whatever line of business your company is in?
- Scene_Cast2 8y ago
  IRC is horrible on phones (shitty history when you drop out of an internet connection, no cross-device unread-count synchronization, no encryption or login, etc). There are add-ons that try to fix that, but it's still a giant pain. I personally love Riot and Matrix as a "modern IRC".
  - xPaw 8y ago
    The Lounge is an IRC client that solves the problems you describe (persistence on any device, synchronised unread counters, push notifications) - https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge It does require having your own server to host it on though.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      Hadn't seen this before. Looks nice. I tried the demo, smooth other than the /j is not an alias for /join, which I think is an obvious oversight.
bigiain 8y ago
For one thing, an IRC client doesn't pin a core of my cpu at 100% and consume half a gig of ram... (But I realise I'm well out on the losing end of this argument, even in groups of old-school hard core technical friends/colleagues, I've been given the "crazy look" when suggesting we just use irc for chat... )
- amorphid 8y ago
  Slack isn't perfect; I agree with that. I haven't experienced the CPU issue, but it does seem to like RAM quite a bit. I just opened it w/ one account active, and it was eating maybe 400MB of RAM. I bumped that up to 6 open accounts, and now it's chewing up maybe 2GB of RAM.
  - eadmund 8y ago
    I'm quite fond of emacs-slack, which is a much better client experience than the Slack 'web' UI.
- Diederich 8y ago
  > pin a core of my cpu at 100% and consume half a gig of ram... I'm not doubting you, and I acknowledge that I hear that kind of thing with some frequency, but I've not seen Slack (running in Chrome on Ubuntu) use anything like those amounts of resources. I've had a pretty busy slack client running for several days, and it's using 204,484K of memory and 2.0% of one CPU.
  - contras1970 8y ago
    200M/2% is still pretty bad, isn't it? IRC clients worked perfectly on machines with less total virtual memory 20 years ago (and before). USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND fubar 2922 0.0 0.1 61648 26668 2 S0+ 19Mar18 22:58.73 weechat
    - Diederich 8y ago
      I hear you! I've been using the Internet most every day since 1988, and am still occasionally struck by the amount of resources seemingly straightforward programs use these days. Re: Slack resource utilization: I'm not passing a value judgment as much as expressing confusion over multiple claims I've noticed about Slack utilization that is far, far greater than anything I've seen.
exikyut 8y ago
I like this approach very much. IRC is just a particular implementation of chat. The only thing keeping it relevant is the several hundred thousand people currently connected to servers. Within a more defined context, such as work communication, adoption network effects become irrelevant. You can just build your own system and set everybody up to use it.

blkhawk 8y ago

I don't see any compelling reason to adopt Slack. It does nothing that I care about that IRC doesn't do. If IRC completely implodes, I would run my own IRC server.

spookthesunset 8y ago
> I would run my own IRC server That's nice for you personally, but how does running an inhouse bespoke IRC server have anything to do with whatever line of business your company is in?
Scene_Cast2 8y ago
IRC is horrible on phones (shitty history when you drop out of an internet connection, no cross-device unread-count synchronization, no encryption or login, etc). There are add-ons that try to fix that, but it's still a giant pain. I personally love Riot and Matrix as a "modern IRC".
- xPaw 8y ago
  The Lounge is an IRC client that solves the problems you describe (persistence on any device, synchronised unread counters, push notifications) - https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge It does require having your own server to host it on though.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Hadn't seen this before. Looks nice. I tried the demo, smooth other than the /j is not an alias for /join, which I think is an obvious oversight.

bigiain 8y ago

For one thing, an IRC client doesn't pin a core of my cpu at 100% and consume half a gig of ram... (But I realise I'm well out on the losing end of this argument, even in groups of old-school hard core technical friends/colleagues, I've been given the "crazy look" when suggesting we just use irc for chat... )

amorphid 8y ago
Slack isn't perfect; I agree with that. I haven't experienced the CPU issue, but it does seem to like RAM quite a bit. I just opened it w/ one account active, and it was eating maybe 400MB of RAM. I bumped that up to 6 open accounts, and now it's chewing up maybe 2GB of RAM.
- eadmund 8y ago
  I'm quite fond of emacs-slack, which is a much better client experience than the Slack 'web' UI.
Diederich 8y ago
> pin a core of my cpu at 100% and consume half a gig of ram... I'm not doubting you, and I acknowledge that I hear that kind of thing with some frequency, but I've not seen Slack (running in Chrome on Ubuntu) use anything like those amounts of resources. I've had a pretty busy slack client running for several days, and it's using 204,484K of memory and 2.0% of one CPU.
- contras1970 8y ago
  200M/2% is still pretty bad, isn't it? IRC clients worked perfectly on machines with less total virtual memory 20 years ago (and before). USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND fubar 2922 0.0 0.1 61648 26668 2 S0+ 19Mar18 22:58.73 weechat
  - Diederich 8y ago
    I hear you! I've been using the Internet most every day since 1988, and am still occasionally struck by the amount of resources seemingly straightforward programs use these days. Re: Slack resource utilization: I'm not passing a value judgment as much as expressing confusion over multiple claims I've noticed about Slack utilization that is far, far greater than anything I've seen.

exikyut 8y ago

I like this approach very much. IRC is just a particular implementation of chat. The only thing keeping it relevant is the several hundred thousand people currently connected to servers. Within a more defined context, such as work communication, adoption network effects become irrelevant. You can just build your own system and set everybody up to use it.