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> Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message. Fair enough, but I w
by jlarocco 8y ago
> Many people here want to write about code in their chats so at the very least want to have an option for monospacing parts of a message.
Fair enough, but I would still argue that if somebody's posting enough code for that to matter, a link to a pastebin or a Github Gist, with syntax highlighting, is a better solution.
> Why do you need to insult other people’s work like that?
Because it's a poor choice to create a proprietary chat protocol because it allows Slack to control what people can say and how they say it.
- loeg 8y agoCreating the proprietary, unstable API protocol was a great choice for Slack given they want to lock-in customers to their paid service. It's just a poor choice for everyone else.
- na85 8y agoSo a business made a user hostile move that happens to also be a good business decision. Why is that laudable? Why is this something worthy of praise? Why do we like this product or company? Why is criticism of this product being downmodded?
- loeg 8y agoNone of this is responsive to my comment; I didn't make any of those claims, nor do I control the collective voting of HN users.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago> Fair enough, but I would still argue that if somebody's posting enough code for that to matter, a link to a pastebin or a Github Gist, with syntax highlighting, is a better solution. Be wary of simply justifying why it's not the end of the world when a feature is missing, which is a much different argument. For example, I bet everyone who uses IRC appreciates some sort of indication for when they are mentioned even though they could ctrl-f for their username every once in a while instead. I'd argue that you don't need to post "enough code" to benefit from monospace or multiline support. A developer channel in IRC is full of one-liners that would be improved by monospace. Also, as a heavy IRC user, it's pretty painful following code discussion through a bunch of external links. Compare that to my developer-centric Slack channels like Elm lang's where short code snippets are used heavily and it's easy to see context, it's so much more convenient. And when someone does have enough code, they can use Slack's snippet feature. But I feel like you can always respond to any feature someone likes with "but why not just [inferior solution], it's not that bad". These things simply add up. :)
- jlarocco 8y ago> Be wary of simply justifying why it's not the end of the world when a feature is missing, which is a much different argument. For example, I bet everyone who uses IRC appreciates some sort of indication for when they are mentioned even though they could ctrl-f for their username every once in a while instead. FWIW, by default my IRC client notifies me when I've been mentioned. A benefit of using an open protocol is that people can develop different clients that cater to their needs. For code discussions I open a browser and an IRC window side by side. If I'm not paying attention to the conversation I just close the browser and don't have code snippets polluting the chat window. > But I feel like you can always respond to any feature someone likes with "but why not just [inferior solution], it's not that bad". These things simply add up. :) I feel that goes both ways, though. Just in this thread people have complained that Slack uses an absurd amount of resources and is proprietary, only to have the concerns sidelined as not important.
- pseudalopex 8y agoSlack has syntax highlighting. Also, monospacing is used in the middle of a message to indicate that something is code, input, or output.