5 ms·

I briefly worked on an XMPP client around that time. It cemented my opinion that the protocol was an absolute abomination.

dietrichepp 1y ago
Company I worked at back then used XMPP. There was something that you could paste into the chat that would make all of the Mac clients crash, and to fix it, someone with a different client would have to join the chat and type a lot of comments to flood the history. I am not surprised to hear the protocol is an abomination.
- kentrado 1y ago
  Seems like a problem with the client rather than the protocol.
  - opan 1y ago
    Yeah, there was a similar bug in HexChat and other (pango?) stuff some years back. I remember even though I was using irssi, it could crash my Termite window.
  - wink 1y ago
    Kinda, but if there is only a limited subset of clients and everyone is basically on the one default per platform, it simply doesn't help.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
That's quite unspecific and unhelpful. Personally I find XMPP much makes sense. Sure it's this weird streaming XML thing, but there's a request/response pattern (IQ) inside that seems fine. I love how nicely it composes: accounts have a tree of nodes they can define for whatever content they want, which is a sensible & flexible base. Then there's pubsub, and ACL capability specs on top of that. Everything stacks relatively sensibly. The past decade has seen some good XMPP Enhancement Protocols (XEP) to create best practices & recommended feature sets. It was such a small jump to create a full "everything app" atop XMPP baseline capabilities: > Libervia [ed: nee Salut-a-Too] is a all-in-one tool to manage all your communications needs: instant messaging, (micro)blogging, file sharing, photo albums, events, forums, tasks, etc. https://libervia.org/ https://libervia.org/ It's unfortunate that the top rated comment is uncontestable blanket desparagement. Can we raise this from a low criticism to something respect-worthy?
- icedchai 1y ago
  I wasn't trying to be specific, just an opinion on what I experienced 10+ years ago. Others are welcome to work with the protocol and develop their own opinions.
  - hackyhacky 1y ago
    If your opinion is based on concrete experience, you could help people understand your position by sharing the specific aspects of XMPP that you dislike. An opinion without evidence or reasoning is not a valuable contribution to the conversation.
    - tcfhgj 1y ago
      My opinion: XMPP is too little like Matrix (e.g. decentralized rooms, people as verification targets, messages (incl. e2ee ones) easily synced to all sessions) while Matrix is in a sub optimal state due to the Element/Element X client split
    - icedchai 1y ago
      It's been well over 10 years since I worked with, almost 15. I remember issues with keeping multiple devices in sync, syncing them back up when a user comes back online, especially with multiuser chats. I understand that is probably better now, with carbons and archiving XEPs. In general, it felt like, XMPP has too many "optional" features. The core protocol is tiny, but everything you need and want to make it useful is optional.
  - wink 1y ago
    Don't worry, every single one of these discussion is a dozen fanboys trying to convince us that our problems back then weren't real :/ (JFTR, was a relatively happy user amongst fellow nerds & family until everyone just stopped using it, and also usage on mobile was terrible on early smart phones and fixed much too late)
- Bjartr 1y ago
  In today's world of containerization and AI powered UI automation, perhaps a single user-facing client could be viable again, powered by hidden per-service clients under the hood. Where each services' UI state is continually monitored and interacted with by an AI directed by user interactions in the visible interface. That would be against the services' ToS probably, but it could work I think. Who needs APIs when a computer can exploit the analog hole and use the same affordances as a human?
oofbey 1y ago
XMPP fans are continuously baffled by why XMPP isn't used for _everything_. STILL! When will the world wake up and realize its simplicity and beauty?
uncircle 1y ago
Pro tip: when a protocol's name contains the words "extensible", "flexible", "universal", "interoperable", they tend to be utter abominations designed by a committee of stakeholders often with conflicting, if not completely unreasonable, requirements.

dietrichepp 1y ago

Company I worked at back then used XMPP. There was something that you could paste into the chat that would make all of the Mac clients crash, and to fix it, someone with a different client would have to join the chat and type a lot of comments to flood the history. I am not surprised to hear the protocol is an abomination.

kentrado 1y ago
Seems like a problem with the client rather than the protocol.
- opan 1y ago
  Yeah, there was a similar bug in HexChat and other (pango?) stuff some years back. I remember even though I was using irssi, it could crash my Termite window.
- wink 1y ago
  Kinda, but if there is only a limited subset of clients and everyone is basically on the one default per platform, it simply doesn't help.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

That's quite unspecific and unhelpful. Personally I find XMPP much makes sense. Sure it's this weird streaming XML thing, but there's a request/response pattern (IQ) inside that seems fine. I love how nicely it composes: accounts have a tree of nodes they can define for whatever content they want, which is a sensible & flexible base. Then there's pubsub, and ACL capability specs on top of that. Everything stacks relatively sensibly. The past decade has seen some good XMPP Enhancement Protocols (XEP) to create best practices & recommended feature sets. It was such a small jump to create a full "everything app" atop XMPP baseline capabilities: > Libervia [ed: nee Salut-a-Too] is a all-in-one tool to manage all your communications needs: instant messaging, (micro)blogging, file sharing, photo albums, events, forums, tasks, etc. https://libervia.org/ https://libervia.org/ It's unfortunate that the top rated comment is uncontestable blanket desparagement. Can we raise this from a low criticism to something respect-worthy?

icedchai 1y ago
I wasn't trying to be specific, just an opinion on what I experienced 10+ years ago. Others are welcome to work with the protocol and develop their own opinions.
- hackyhacky 1y ago
  If your opinion is based on concrete experience, you could help people understand your position by sharing the specific aspects of XMPP that you dislike. An opinion without evidence or reasoning is not a valuable contribution to the conversation.
  - tcfhgj 1y ago
    My opinion: XMPP is too little like Matrix (e.g. decentralized rooms, people as verification targets, messages (incl. e2ee ones) easily synced to all sessions) while Matrix is in a sub optimal state due to the Element/Element X client split
  - icedchai 1y ago
    It's been well over 10 years since I worked with, almost 15. I remember issues with keeping multiple devices in sync, syncing them back up when a user comes back online, especially with multiuser chats. I understand that is probably better now, with carbons and archiving XEPs. In general, it felt like, XMPP has too many "optional" features. The core protocol is tiny, but everything you need and want to make it useful is optional.
- wink 1y ago
  Don't worry, every single one of these discussion is a dozen fanboys trying to convince us that our problems back then weren't real :/ (JFTR, was a relatively happy user amongst fellow nerds & family until everyone just stopped using it, and also usage on mobile was terrible on early smart phones and fixed much too late)
Bjartr 1y ago
In today's world of containerization and AI powered UI automation, perhaps a single user-facing client could be viable again, powered by hidden per-service clients under the hood. Where each services' UI state is continually monitored and interacted with by an AI directed by user interactions in the visible interface. That would be against the services' ToS probably, but it could work I think. Who needs APIs when a computer can exploit the analog hole and use the same affordances as a human?

oofbey 1y ago

XMPP fans are continuously baffled by why XMPP isn't used for _everything_. STILL! When will the world wake up and realize its simplicity and beauty?

uncircle 1y ago

Pro tip: when a protocol's name contains the words "extensible", "flexible", "universal", "interoperable", they tend to be utter abominations designed by a committee of stakeholders often with conflicting, if not completely unreasonable, requirements.