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I apologize if this is more of a response to the headline than the article content, but how does Slack, a professionally-oriented messaging app, not have syntax

by culi 2y ago

I apologize if this is more of a response to the headline than the article content, but how does Slack, a professionally-oriented messaging app, not have syntax highlighting features for their markdown while Discord— a casual, gamer-oriented messaging app– does?

gleenn 2y ago
Markdown is a technical, not business tool? Gamers tend to be technical?
- wiseowise 2y ago
  [flagged]
pinoy420 2y ago
I would love to use discord at work
- culi 2y ago
  It would also cost companies a fraction of what Slack costs. And there's a thriving bot community for Discord as well I worked at a startup where our single biggest cost was the Slack bill. It's crazy to me what companies will go through to "seem professional"
  - dijksterhuis 2y ago
    on the free tier discord also has some more useful functionality which, iirc, slack doesn’t have on free tier or has a lot of limits on - free voice/video channels (persistent meeting rooms) - put text/voice channels into categories - RBAC for channel categories, text and voice channels (only engineering role can see engineering stuff) - mute notifications from specific channels or categories probably some more but can’t think of them off the top of my head. straight up, if i were starting something tomorrow, i’d use discord and not slack.
  - jlarocco 2y ago
    Could be worse. I worked for a company that wouldn't pay for Slack, but mandated we use it. Incredibly frustrating to search for something, see that people have discussed and answered it before, but not be able to read it.
    - culi 2y ago
      yeah that's a nightmare! There are slack alternatives that have unlimited messaging history in the free tier!
belter 2y ago
Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows: - Endless channel creation that buries crucial info... - Confusing side-panel threads that are easily missed, leading to fragmented discussions... - Notification overload that bombards you with pings... It's success it's a mystery, I can only attribute to fashion or the hype of chasing the latest trend.
- agnivade 2y ago
  Curious to know what other alternatives have you found better.
  - snowe2010 2y ago
    Zulip is vastly better for people who are willing to learn an interface. But it’s not really very “pretty”
    - psyclobe 2y ago
      Hah, its 'good enough', but really has some bizarre ui flows that make things so very, very confusing...
      - tabbott 2y ago
        Hi! It'd be a huge help if you can stop by chat.zulip.org and share in #feedback what you find bizarre. Maybe we can fix them for you :)
  - jdve 2y ago
    We use Twist at my company. I find the emphasis on asynchronous communication refreshing. It encourages more thoughtful discussion. Basecamp also lends helpfully in this direction, although adopting Basecamp means accepting an entire project management system as well.
    - 2y ago
naught0 2y ago
It sorta supports syntax highlighting with text snippets (cmd-shift-return iirc), just not in regular backticks like Discord. It's not great, though. Copying directly from Slack rather than downloading may give you invisible characters in the data
bstsb 2y ago
ironically enough you can see from the screenshot of their "internal webhook" that they're using discord to log when a new support thread on slack is created!
xnorswap 2y ago
Also how does Slack still have an error where trying to move the cursor in/out of syntax highlighting can "trap" you so you no longer see the message that will actually get submitted. You can desync the WYSWIG nature of it to the point where you submit text that was "invisible" to you while also potentially deleting text in the submission that you can still see. A more simple to reproduce bug is that you can't edit before the first character of a syntax block. The cursor skips from outside the syntax block to after the first character inside the block.
grougnax 2y ago
this
gorbypark 2y ago
Yeah, Discord for coding related things is far superior than anything else I've tried in the space (Slack, Teams, Skype, Mattermost, etc). I've not actually used it in a professional setting but there are a large number of very active/thriving coding related communities (mostly open source, but not exclusively) and Discord seems to handle them well.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
A few theories. - Tech debt, they can't easily add or change features anymore - Performance, rendering syntax highlighted markdown in messages is too expensive - Performance optimization, by not having syntax highlighting they encourage people to create snippets instead, which goes to different backends and lazily loaded clientside rendering pipelines to support larger files and syntax highlighting.
- andreif 2y ago
  So I have to upload files to enable syntax highlighting. There is probably a reason but the users frustration is helping them to look for alternatives.
- culi 2y ago
  > Tech debt, they can't easily add or change features anymore It's this. I've worked on Slack applications and you can clearly see why they might struggle to implement this given the data structure of their messages. Their brand of markup is also quirky and it might be difficult to add this feature in a backwards compatible way Snippets was added much later and part of me feels like the demand for syntax highlighting was exactly why they added snippets. It's also a scapegoat for them not adding syntax highlighting to regular messaging
WorldMaker 2y ago
In Slack you get syntax highlighting if you use /snippet instead of Markdown fences, but everything else supports Markdown fences, so it seems dumb Slack doesn't and you have to discover a random slash command to do it. Similarly it bugs me that Slack's Markdown uses a different definition of italics and bold than CommonMark and most everyone else. I know the biggest standard of Markdown is that there is no real standard, but Slack's Markdown sure is less standard than normal.

by culi 2y ago

gleenn 2y ago

Markdown is a technical, not business tool? Gamers tend to be technical?

wiseowise 2y ago
[flagged]

pinoy420 2y ago

I would love to use discord at work

culi 2y ago
It would also cost companies a fraction of what Slack costs. And there's a thriving bot community for Discord as well I worked at a startup where our single biggest cost was the Slack bill. It's crazy to me what companies will go through to "seem professional"
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  on the free tier discord also has some more useful functionality which, iirc, slack doesn’t have on free tier or has a lot of limits on - free voice/video channels (persistent meeting rooms) - put text/voice channels into categories - RBAC for channel categories, text and voice channels (only engineering role can see engineering stuff) - mute notifications from specific channels or categories probably some more but can’t think of them off the top of my head. straight up, if i were starting something tomorrow, i’d use discord and not slack.
- jlarocco 2y ago
  Could be worse. I worked for a company that wouldn't pay for Slack, but mandated we use it. Incredibly frustrating to search for something, see that people have discussed and answered it before, but not be able to read it.
  - culi 2y ago
    yeah that's a nightmare! There are slack alternatives that have unlimited messaging history in the free tier!

belter 2y ago

Slack might be billed as a professional tool, but it also has one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever used, riddled with non-intuitive workflows: - Endless channel creation that buries crucial info... - Confusing side-panel threads that are easily missed, leading to fragmented discussions... - Notification overload that bombards you with pings... It's success it's a mystery, I can only attribute to fashion or the hype of chasing the latest trend.

agnivade 2y ago
Curious to know what other alternatives have you found better.
- snowe2010 2y ago
  Zulip is vastly better for people who are willing to learn an interface. But it’s not really very “pretty”
  - psyclobe 2y ago
    Hah, its 'good enough', but really has some bizarre ui flows that make things so very, very confusing...
    - tabbott 2y ago
      Hi! It'd be a huge help if you can stop by chat.zulip.org and share in #feedback what you find bizarre. Maybe we can fix them for you :)
- jdve 2y ago
  We use Twist at my company. I find the emphasis on asynchronous communication refreshing. It encourages more thoughtful discussion. Basecamp also lends helpfully in this direction, although adopting Basecamp means accepting an entire project management system as well.
  - 2y ago

naught0 2y ago

It sorta supports syntax highlighting with text snippets (cmd-shift-return iirc), just not in regular backticks like Discord. It's not great, though. Copying directly from Slack rather than downloading may give you invisible characters in the data

bstsb 2y ago

ironically enough you can see from the screenshot of their "internal webhook" that they're using discord to log when a new support thread on slack is created!

xnorswap 2y ago

Also how does Slack still have an error where trying to move the cursor in/out of syntax highlighting can "trap" you so you no longer see the message that will actually get submitted. You can desync the WYSWIG nature of it to the point where you submit text that was "invisible" to you while also potentially deleting text in the submission that you can still see. A more simple to reproduce bug is that you can't edit before the first character of a syntax block. The cursor skips from outside the syntax block to after the first character inside the block.

grougnax 2y ago

this

gorbypark 2y ago

Yeah, Discord for coding related things is far superior than anything else I've tried in the space (Slack, Teams, Skype, Mattermost, etc). I've not actually used it in a professional setting but there are a large number of very active/thriving coding related communities (mostly open source, but not exclusively) and Discord seems to handle them well.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

A few theories. - Tech debt, they can't easily add or change features anymore - Performance, rendering syntax highlighted markdown in messages is too expensive - Performance optimization, by not having syntax highlighting they encourage people to create snippets instead, which goes to different backends and lazily loaded clientside rendering pipelines to support larger files and syntax highlighting.

andreif 2y ago
So I have to upload files to enable syntax highlighting. There is probably a reason but the users frustration is helping them to look for alternatives.
culi 2y ago
> Tech debt, they can't easily add or change features anymore It's this. I've worked on Slack applications and you can clearly see why they might struggle to implement this given the data structure of their messages. Their brand of markup is also quirky and it might be difficult to add this feature in a backwards compatible way Snippets was added much later and part of me feels like the demand for syntax highlighting was exactly why they added snippets. It's also a scapegoat for them not adding syntax highlighting to regular messaging

WorldMaker 2y ago

In Slack you get syntax highlighting if you use /snippet instead of Markdown fences, but everything else supports Markdown fences, so it seems dumb Slack doesn't and you have to discover a random slash command to do it. Similarly it bugs me that Slack's Markdown uses a different definition of italics and bold than CommonMark and most everyone else. I know the biggest standard of Markdown is that there is no real standard, but Slack's Markdown sure is less standard than normal.