Ehh, as someone your age (a couple years younger even), I have a completely different take on IRC.
It's incredibly intuitive because it's so similar to all the other chat clients we grew up with (presumably because they're based on IRC).
Sure, figuring out bouncers and build bots is a little tricky at first, but so what? That's the fun part. It's kinda fun digging into the IRC protocol and figuring out how it works.
And ok, if that's not fun for you, there are plenty of really "click and install" tools for you (e.g. ZNC is super easy to setup).
Not to sound like an elitist prick, but if you can't figure out how to setup an IRC bouncer, I'm not sure I really trust you contributing to the linux kernel, yaknow?
Reducing friction is great: But the kind of friction we should be trying to reduce is bureaucratic friction. Throwing out PRs and yelling at people because they forgot to cc some particular maintainer - that's the kind of friction that sucks. Having to setup an IRC bouncer? Idk, I think that's fine.
Same age group: Which chat systems were similar to IRC, but not to Slack, outside of IRC clients?
And just because someone doesn't want to spend the time fiddling with IRC bouncers, IRC bots, getting clients to display things nicely doesn't mean that they are a bad developer. Just that they have different priorities for their time than you.
I'm not saying that Slack is perfect or frictionless, but neither is IRC. And especially if you don't do it all the time, getting people set up to work with Slack is way easier than IRC.
I really find these discussions half amusing and half depressing. 2 sides have something that is "good enough", both insist that nearly all you want can be solved with their solution, especially if you just do X1,X2,X3,Y1,Y5, and Z4 and you technically could build something that is perfect for both on top: but sadly (and understandably) no-one actually cares enough to do so. Because what they have is "good enough"(TM).
> Which chat systems were similar to IRC, but not to Slack, outside of IRC clients?
Slack is very similar to IRC at its core, so I'm not sure I see what you're asking here. I meant that IRC isn't foreign or alien to anyone who's familiar with chat clients - the basic concept of servers and channels and nicknames is pretty universal.
> And just because someone doesn't want to spend the time fiddling with IRC bouncers, IRC bots, getting clients to display things nicely doesn't mean that they are a bad developer.
I feel like I covered this point already:
> And ok, if that's not fun for you, there are plenty of really "click and install" tools for you (e.g. ZNC is super easy to setup).
> And especially if you don't do it all the time, getting people set up to work with Slack is way easier than IRC.
What are you referring to here by "getting people setup"? Like a corporate environment? It's fairly easy to setup bouncers and the like in a corporate environment using tools like chef, etc. I really don't feel like this is a strong argument for a corporate setting.
If you mean on a personal level for individual contributors to get up and running on contributing to FOSS, sure it's not 100% frictionless - but pretty much. Again, there are lots of bouncers that can be setup with <5 commands.
If the argument is that it takes an extra ten minutes to install ZNC vs. Slack, then I dunno - I guess I don't see that as very much friction when the tradeoff is using non-free software.
> I really find these discussions half amusing and half depressing
I feel the same way, but for different reasons. It's a little depressing to me how averse people are to spending 10 extra minutes to use FOSS, usually under the guise of "I have different priorities." I thought developers in the wild would at least be slightly more willing to invest the time, especially post-Snowden, to use FOSS. I guess that was just a college pipe-dream of mine.
I meant that software can be a philosophy or a project, and where you land on this concept will inform your decision making process. I agree with your above comment and don't find it contradictory to mine above.
Some great tools for software development:
* Microsoft
* OS X
* Linux
* Free BSD
To some degree that represents a spectrum and I don't fault the author for having strong beliefs about how software should be built, and agree with them for the most part. I think he could have made a stronger point generally from a philosophical and technical angle, i.e the regular arguments for open source tools, and highlight Slack as an example.
IRC is quite similar to Slack, but for the reasons the author suggests, it is different.
I don't think you sound like an elitist prick, but rather the kind of person that enjoys tinkering with technology for fun. Perhaps unfortunately, this view is no longer representative of most people working in technology, and definitely not all of the users of Slack.
I think that's true, but I also think it's a little silly to contribute to FOSS but be unwilling to spend the extra time to use FOSS.
I guess it's kinda just sad to me that you'd be unwilling to spend the time to use FOSS while you're contributing to FOSS. If it was incredibly costly, sure, but IRC? I dunno.
We're interested in tinkering with a lot of technology. We're not interested in tinkering with boring (admittedly a very subjective judgment) technology like a chat server.
It's incredibly intuitive because it's so similar to all the other chat clients we grew up with (presumably because they're based on IRC).
Sure, figuring out bouncers and build bots is a little tricky at first, but so what? That's the fun part. It's kinda fun digging into the IRC protocol and figuring out how it works.
And ok, if that's not fun for you, there are plenty of really "click and install" tools for you (e.g. ZNC is super easy to setup).
Not to sound like an elitist prick, but if you can't figure out how to setup an IRC bouncer, I'm not sure I really trust you contributing to the linux kernel, yaknow?
Reducing friction is great: But the kind of friction we should be trying to reduce is bureaucratic friction. Throwing out PRs and yelling at people because they forgot to cc some particular maintainer - that's the kind of friction that sucks. Having to setup an IRC bouncer? Idk, I think that's fine.