3 ms·

how are they interoperable when one side uses a feature and the other doesn't support it? that's just degrading the experience... and this is just one small re

by kmlx 5y ago

how are they interoperable when one side uses a feature and the other doesn't support it? that's just degrading the experience... and this is just one small reason why the industry decided against moving forward with this decades ago. it simply didn't make any sense then, certainly doesn't make sense now.

grishka 5y ago
> that's just degrading the experience... Uhhh yes? That's the point? The alternative to this degraded experience is no experience at all.
kmlx 5y ago
> > that's just degrading the experience... > Uhhh yes? That's the point? The alternative to this degraded experience is no experience at all. so basically it's either degraded experience but w/ interoperability or great experience but w/o interoperability? that doesn't really make sense. why not a third way with great experience and great interoperability? i'm asking because i can guarantee that no one will use clients that provide a degraded experience when you've got the established players providing a great experience.
- grishka 5y ago
  It's important for the capability to be there. The issue is that currently "established players" control that experience. In a saner world, experience needs to be decoupled from infrastructure. Somehow, ICQ worked wonderfully despite everyone I knew using an unofficial client. The official client (at least Windows one) was a terrible mess. It had ads and all those features no one ever asked for, like games and and news and an entire picture-based language (I'm not joking). But QIP, the client I used, only did the things I needed an ICQ client to do, and nothing more. It also had no ads.
- Jenk 5y ago
  I used to use slack-term and/or Ripcord specifically I wanted the "degraded" experience - i.e., smaller resource footprint and none of the gimmicky nonsense.
michaelt 5y ago
> how are they interoperable when one side uses a feature and the other doesn't support it? The answer to that is: It depends. For example, HTTP2 is basically an invisible upgrade which is faster (sometimes). If either end doesn't support it, falling back to a prior version is transparent to the user. On the other hand, if you want to update IRC to be more like Slack/Discord, with features like oauth2 login? Well then clients that don't support it won't be able to connect.

by kmlx 5y ago

grishka 5y ago

> that's just degrading the experience... Uhhh yes? That's the point? The alternative to this degraded experience is no experience at all.

kmlx 5y ago

> > that's just degrading the experience... > Uhhh yes? That's the point? The alternative to this degraded experience is no experience at all. so basically it's either degraded experience but w/ interoperability or great experience but w/o interoperability? that doesn't really make sense. why not a third way with great experience and great interoperability? i'm asking because i can guarantee that no one will use clients that provide a degraded experience when you've got the established players providing a great experience.

grishka 5y ago
It's important for the capability to be there. The issue is that currently "established players" control that experience. In a saner world, experience needs to be decoupled from infrastructure. Somehow, ICQ worked wonderfully despite everyone I knew using an unofficial client. The official client (at least Windows one) was a terrible mess. It had ads and all those features no one ever asked for, like games and and news and an entire picture-based language (I'm not joking). But QIP, the client I used, only did the things I needed an ICQ client to do, and nothing more. It also had no ads.
Jenk 5y ago
I used to use slack-term and/or Ripcord specifically I wanted the "degraded" experience - i.e., smaller resource footprint and none of the gimmicky nonsense.

michaelt 5y ago

> how are they interoperable when one side uses a feature and the other doesn't support it? The answer to that is: It depends. For example, HTTP2 is basically an invisible upgrade which is faster (sometimes). If either end doesn't support it, falling back to a prior version is transparent to the user. On the other hand, if you want to update IRC to be more like Slack/Discord, with features like oauth2 login? Well then clients that don't support it won't be able to connect.