Yes I've written most of an XMPP client from scratch. It's a disgusting wart of a protocol over engineered by insane people. My previous comment on the matter:

Yes I've written most of an XMPP client from scratch. It's a disgusting wart of a protocol over engineered by insane people. My previous comment on the matter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426581 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426581 Extensibility is really trivial. Human readable is trivial. Protocols based on XML solve neither of these well at all IMHO. If XMPP ever did take off, we'd see a large increase in bandwidth usage everywhere. No doubt though they'd then just wrap it all up in another layer of complex compression to compensate for a ridiculous protocol.