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If there's anything that's overhyped these days, it's Matrix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27557113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27557113 was s

If there's anything that's overhyped these days, it's Matrix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27557113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27557113 was so brilliant at capturing my own thoughts/concerns on it.

lmm 5y ago
I think that bit of history shows what a false idol extensibility is. 20 years of extension and improvement has resulted in a chat system that is still staggeringly worse in practice than its competitors of 20 years ago. (Seriously, XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use). Look at XML vs JSON for another example. A simple standard that has no improvement path except completely replacing it turns out to be much more usable than an extensible, upgradeable standard.
- topdancing 5y ago
  > Seriously, XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use Have you actually tried the modern clients like Conversations/Dino? I've been running a private XMPP server for friends for the past couple of years and the only way to describe it is rock-solid.
  - gefhfff 5y ago
    Have you actually tried any alternatives at all? Even Matrix with Element (which used to have quite a few issues with slowness and encryption), works way better these days Not to mention any widely used centralized messenger...
    - topdancing 5y ago
      Yes, in addition to my private XMPP server, I have been running a Matrix server for one of my clients for about the same amount of time. Element desktop is... slow and terrible in comparison with all of its confusing options, and regularly kicks just a single person off the server for no apparent reason when their session becomes corrupted. I really want to use fractal but it doesn't do E2EE. Synapse was a horrible resource hog, but conduit actually seems pretty good. Still prefer ejabberd.
  - lmm 5y ago
    I tried Conversations (admittedly a while ago) and found it a solid meh. Its features mostly worked, but it definitely felt clunkier than AIM.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use Care to elaborate? I used AIM back in the day and i have a much more pleasant and varied experience on modern XMPP, which supports many gateways to the networks i care for (including mobile phone like skype was doing! [0]). > XML vs JSON And yet the people who claimed XML was too complex have since then reimplemented the XML features into JSON, such as JSON schemas which are key to federated protocols (eg. ActivityPub) built on top of JSON message passing. [0] https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/
ajconway 5y ago
Hype and (related) money is what open messaging needs at the moment. XMPP is fine, it’s stable, extensible and generally works, but average users have never heard of it.
ptman 5y ago
Those parts of matrix needed for interop need to go through the spec change proposal process to land in the spec. But namespacing is used extensively. The spec reserves the 'm.' prefix, e.g. 'm.text', but everyone is encouraged to extend using reverse dns namespacing, e.g. 'com.ycombinator.news.our.extension'.

lmm 5y ago

I think that bit of history shows what a false idol extensibility is. 20 years of extension and improvement has resulted in a chat system that is still staggeringly worse in practice than its competitors of 20 years ago. (Seriously, XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use). Look at XML vs JSON for another example. A simple standard that has no improvement path except completely replacing it turns out to be much more usable than an extensible, upgradeable standard.

topdancing 5y ago
> Seriously, XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use Have you actually tried the modern clients like Conversations/Dino? I've been running a private XMPP server for friends for the past couple of years and the only way to describe it is rock-solid.
- gefhfff 5y ago
  Have you actually tried any alternatives at all? Even Matrix with Element (which used to have quite a few issues with slowness and encryption), works way better these days Not to mention any widely used centralized messenger...
  - topdancing 5y ago
    Yes, in addition to my private XMPP server, I have been running a Matrix server for one of my clients for about the same amount of time. Element desktop is... slow and terrible in comparison with all of its confusing options, and regularly kicks just a single person off the server for no apparent reason when their session becomes corrupted. I really want to use fractal but it doesn't do E2EE. Synapse was a horrible resource hog, but conduit actually seems pretty good. Still prefer ejabberd.
- lmm 5y ago
  I tried Conversations (admittedly a while ago) and found it a solid meh. Its features mostly worked, but it definitely felt clunkier than AIM.
southerntofu 5y ago
> XMPP is still worse than AIM for actual day-to-day use Care to elaborate? I used AIM back in the day and i have a much more pleasant and varied experience on modern XMPP, which supports many gateways to the networks i care for (including mobile phone like skype was doing! [0]). > XML vs JSON And yet the people who claimed XML was too complex have since then reimplemented the XML features into JSON, such as JSON schemas which are key to federated protocols (eg. ActivityPub) built on top of JSON message passing. [0] https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/

ajconway 5y ago

Hype and (related) money is what open messaging needs at the moment. XMPP is fine, it’s stable, extensible and generally works, but average users have never heard of it.

ptman 5y ago

Those parts of matrix needed for interop need to go through the spec change proposal process to land in the spec. But namespacing is used extensively. The spec reserves the 'm.' prefix, e.g. 'm.text', but everyone is encouraged to extend using reverse dns namespacing, e.g. 'com.ycombinator.news.our.extension'.