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Why is it everyone outside of programmers (and even then) always picks chat services with the worst client software available? IRC had issues but at least the
by swiley 8y ago
Why is it everyone outside of programmers (and even then) always picks chat services with the worst client software available?
IRC had issues but at least the clients were decent.
- Kuraj 8y agoWell, the alternative at the time was using Skype.
- Shish2k 8y agoProgrammers and non-programmers have very different ideas of what is "decent". Examples of things non-programmers want in a group chat app: - persistent chat history - mobile client - a sane registration / nickname reservation method Perhaps requests like those don't match your own priorities, but I don't think they're wrong.
- aepiepaey 8y ago> - persistent chat history That's kind of misleading. "Server-side chat history" is more accurate. IRC logs are more persistent. It's possible to go back and check them at any time. If I've read the messages, I know they've been logged, and I know they'll still be there. Discord history, on the other hand, can be deleted from the servers at any time. Often when you go back to double check something that was written previously, it's not there any more.
- zaarn 8y agoOnly if you run a bouncer or IRC client 24/7, which means you either pay for it or some device in your house will be running all the team. Not great for the average user.
- swiley 8y agoMost channels have a bot running that logs it. If you really care to read through every message you can go read the log.
- BoorishBears 8y agoDiscord has a wonderful client in my experience. Sure people will rush to say the IRC clients of old opened in .02 nanoseconds after you thought about checking your channels, but that's not useful compared to the fact Discord out of the box has more functionality than an IRC client could ever hope to provide, and looks pleasing to the eye while doing that.
- LinuxBender 8y agoYou can still put a web client with persistent chat history in front of IRC. TheLounge is one example [1] [2] and Convos is another. [3] [4] [1] - https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ [2] - https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge [3] - https://convos.by/ https://convos.by/ [4] - https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos
- zaarn 8y agoSetting those up isn't quite trivial for the non-programmer user and they have problems with some IRC servers (it's almost impossible to connect to EFnet via thelounge in my experience and convos had a variety of problems).
- LinuxBender 8y agoAgreed. On the upside, you need one technical friend that can set it up for many friends to use. For EFnet and several other networks, you need to get permission from NetOps/NetAdmins or an individual server operator if you don't need the fail-over resilience.
- jgust 8y agoThese types of arguments tickle me. Why isn't instagram just a shiny web frontend to a newsgroup?
- LinuxBender 8y agoI am not arguing, just providing alternate options. They are not for everyone. FWIW, there are also shiny front-ends to NNTP. That would actually be a great way to have a threaded messaging system and attachments.