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I like the idea but I think there's probably a few too many chat apps going around already as well.

• tomcam 6y ago
  Which ones should be eliminated?
  • cpach 6y ago
    Evolution will take care of that. A lot of them will simply fizzle out.
    • wizzwizz4 6y ago
      Beware evolution's pruning. It optimises for survival (and as a consequence, reproduction and ruthlessness), which is often at odds with what people value.
      • jlkuester7 6y ago
        On the other hand, the chat system that "survives" is probably the best one to use in the long-term. Features, integrations, and a slick UI are great, but without a stable community of maintainers the project if probably not a good candidate for long-term use. An open, federate-able messaging protocol is also a good thing to have! (email, XMPP, Matrix)
      • didericis 6y ago
        I get your point, but a product is only bought or used if people value it in some way (whether for good reasons or bad reasons), so product evolution has people’s values built into the process.
        • wizzwizz4 6y ago
          Product evolution has people's actions built into the process. Who, before playing Farmville, would value spending $1000 on digital sheep?
          • didericis 6y ago
            People’s actions reflect their true values. The sad truth is that people paying $1000 for digital sheep value the immediate gratification of the game more than other uses of that money at the moment of purchase. Addictive products designed to exploit our baser instincts are dangerous, so again, I get and agree with your point, but I think it’s important to remember that voluntarily purchased products are by definition valued by the people who purchase them. The values of the people purchasing products are an intrinsic part of product evolution.
      • orblivion 6y ago
        I picked up The Selfish Gene because I was hoping to figure out how JavaScript got so popular.
        • swirepe 6y ago
          Any insights?
          • wizzwizz4 6y ago
            Probably not. JavaScript's so popular because the web is the universal cross-platform target, and Node.JS has a slightly lower barrier-to-entry to Hello World than learning a new language. You'll want to study energetics to understand that.
          • orblivion 6y ago
            Only about a third of the way through, but I've picked up some great insights in general. Nothing about JavaScript (yet).
            • webmaven 6y ago
              > Only about a third of the way through, but I've picked up some great insights in general. Nothing about JavaScript (yet). The next book you might want to read looking for the same sort of insights ought to be "The Plausibility of Life", which explores the mechanisms of evolution's generativity.
          • Turing_Machine 6y ago
            IMO, JavaScript became the most popular language in the world because: 1) Everyone with a modern, full-featured browser already has it. There's nothing to install. It's the modern equivalent of the built-in BASIC in the early microcomputers. 2) "View Source" lets you see exactly how something was done at the click of a mouse. This is invaluable for learning. 3) Writing it and debugging it just requires a text editor and the browser mentioned before, not some baroque toolchain. You can even modify it and rerun it from directly within the browser, most of which have fairly sophisticated JS debuggers built in nowadays. 4) Rich text, GUI widgets, networking...all that stuff is already baked into the browser cake. You don't need to fool around with a separate libraries. 5) Interpreted, so iterative development is fast. 6) Forgiving (some would say "sloppy"), so beginners don't get overwhelmed with type systems and similar shizzle ("Why can't I just add 1 and 0.5? WTF?") Of course, this also brings problems along with it. No free lunches. Some other languages, on some platforms, have some of these features, but none to my knowledge has all of them. For example, Linux systems do come with C, and do have the source code available, but looking up the line of source that produced exactly what you're seeing on the screen in, say, an X program, is a far more involved process than just right-clicking it and choosing "View Source". Node, in turn, became popular because JavaScript is popular. That's my take, FWIW.
    • amelius 6y ago
      Sadly, evolution seems to not converge to a single chat standard.
      • cpach 6y ago
        Indeed.
      • anticensor 6y ago
        It converges to XKCD 927 instead.