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Comment by cdnsteve | Hacker News Reader

We initially used Skype on our team to communicate with others. However, the software was horribly buggy on OSX. Slack has become part of our main toolchain. It works, has the basic features you need and doesn't get in our way. The integrations are great and we'll continue to use them.

Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the ball.

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"Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up"

This. This exactly. Is it really unbelievable to assume Microsoft wouldn't attempt to build their own IRC+ clone and save a few billion while they are at it?

I do agree with you, Slack is much better than Skype, but I would add that Lync is just as good. I went from Lync to Slack (after changing jobs) and I would say that Lync not only works just as well but has more features a team would find useful. For instance, multi-user video+voice chat w/ great screensharing/presentation functionality.

Edit: Should mention I was using Lync in a Windows shop and now Slack in OSX. In Windows it worked perfectly but I could be convinced it had issues in OSX.

When I was forced to use Lync (due to an acquisition) in 2014 it was absolutely fucking terrible. The OS X client failed to report online status correctly, couldn't participate in most group chats or video or audio calls, and crashed regularly. Also weirdly non-native UI. And, no linux client to speak of - for a startup like the one I worked for where many devs used linux, that was a nonstarter. Has the story improved since then? (Thankfully no longer have to deal with it since I quit that job a half year later)

If you're using Lync, but can get by with just IM and presence, install Pidgin and use SIPE[1]. Even if you're on Windows, it's worth doing - Lync has some silly restrictions about running multiple instances, and no way to connect to more than one account at a time

[1] http://sipe.sourceforge.net/

Lync actually starts for you? Mine just segfaults on startup. I've given up on it entirely.

Adium has a plugin available (OCS) that lets you connect. No video or audio, but if you just need IM to work, this'll do the job.

Fortunately we have irc, lync is more used by managers to find out when people are available.

I'll have a look though thanks!

So much this. We are currently using Lync and to quote you: absolutely fucking terrible.

12 clicks to view an attached image! 13 and you accidentally cancel it and it must be re-sent.

You should see how much even people inside microsoft hate Lync.

Fix it then. I heard a lot of sound and fury after the Skype acquisition, but it seems to have signified nothing.

LOL, "lync.exe" a.k.a. "Skype for Business".

1. The worst brand management this side of 1984. "Skype for Business" has nothing to do with Skype and the .exe is still called "lync.exe"

2. SDK: Trying to use the C# SDK for even simple tasks leaves your app deadlocking or spinning 100% CPU in threads you didn't create or throwing native exceptions that doesn't make any sense as they are referencing raw hex 0x12345678 pointers or COM objects you never even touched. And if you try to watchdog all that have fun with 5 orphaned lync.exe's claiming your USB audio/video device.

Microsoft products are filled with references left behind by what I can only assume to be developers who were just hoping to get on a different product team after their next review.

SharePoint's virtual path for its SOAP services is "_vti_bin". VTI = Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, the makers of FrontPage and the FrontPage Server Extensions.

Then there was Groove (brought in Ray Ozzie's luggage) that was renamed SharePoint Workspace (groove.exe).

SharePoint Designer (which didn't actually have a visual designer in the 2013, and final, release) crashes when performing some operations in source files ... With an exception in the FPEDITAX.DLL (FrontPage Editor ActiveX).

Those can all almost be forgiven - they are like vestigial organs after each product evolved into something else.

Until you get to OneDrive. smh

I knew OneDrive was going to be the punchline -_- So much wasted time.

Can you or the GP explain?

OneDrive For Business is pretty much unusable:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2ex10y/onedrive_f...

Until recently, the Sysinternals executables was signed with a Microsoft certificate but the drivers inside Process Explorer was still signed under the old pre-acquisition certificate (I think they actually even renewed it too)!

+1 for pointing out the useless slow grinding garbage this lync-skype chimera is.

That SDK is just awful. The sample applications don't even compile, and the documentation is woeful. Tends to make the Lync client leak memory like a sieve, to boot - which is loads of fun, since there is no way to ensure that anything gets cleaned up properly, not an IDisposable in sight.

If it wasn't such a huge PITA to find a compatible SIP library, or write one from scratch, I'd have dumped it long ago. Sadly, I've had to do enough with it that I'm probably an "expert" at it now...

> Sadly, I've had to do enough with it that I'm probably an "expert" at it now...

I think this explains a lot of poorly designed but complex enterprise software (e.g. MS). People eventually learn to deal -> poor design becomes less of a pain point -> less incentive to fix issues.

Between the two I'd pick Slack, hands-down. Lync is awful, and I have to use it—so I use the Adium with the OCS plugin instead. It doesn't do audio calls or video, but it is stable and fast. (For video, hangouts are much better anyway.)

Slack? I use it, but I don't see the attraction. It's just another chat client with a couple of cute features. I'm really not clear on why the world seems so enamored with something that's really not much of an improvement on something we had in 1995.

It's a huge practical improvement over IRC. The integrations are turn-key for most things, very powerful, and deep search integration, so it can become your one-stop shop for things. It realistically has the possibility to replace Dropbox and email for internal collaboration. The channels, groups, and notifications preferences make it possible to structure your team for maximum signal to noise across both desktop and mobile.

Saying that Slack is "just another chat client" is sort of like all the old arguments about how much more powerful PCs were than Macs because they have more features—it's ignoring the value of design and conceptual elegance, and the real impact that has on UX and productivity.

Every feature you mention was available in the '90s. I'm not saying Slack is bad, just that it's nothing impressive or innovative. The only surprising thing about it is that someone didn't make it sooner.

> The only surprising thing about it is that someone didn't make it sooner.

... is that not the hallmark of a great product?

Moreso that open source sprouts by necessity mostly. IRC buildbots and other integrations have been around forever. It's just that Slack paid for the integrations that really makes it shine. Money, and well the work->integrations it buys, really talks.

UI/UX.

> Every feature you mention was available in the '90s.

The fact that you could log irc transcripts, index them, give them a web interface, and write bots to chain things together is not the same feature as Slack integrations. If that is your bar for a feature, then we might as well give up trying to write innovative software, because it all uses the same opcodes anyway.

> I'm not saying Slack is bad, just that it's nothing impressive or innovative.

The attitude that a new product is not innovative because its features resemble features from past products leads to no logical conclusion except that nothing is innovative. Everything is based on previous ideas.

If a product were merely the sum of its features, then Apple would not be alive today.

Lync on Mac was a nightmare the last time I had to use it.

Still is. Huge bane in my personal existence... forces Mac users to do even goofier things like running Lync in a Windows VM on their Mac (super duper for voice quality).

Also, OSX doesn't let you tag packets, so we have to do it at the network layer.

MS is promising us Skype for Business on Mac will be great. We'll see.

I couldn't copy a line of text on Lync without it randomly grabbing other random lines from earlier in the conversation. Not the line above it, or the last thing I said. Just completely random things that either person had said, that may have been 2 or 3 messages ago, or maybe 2 or 3 hundred messages ago.

This was on Windows 7.

The problem seems to have been solved when we upgraded to Skype for Business a few months ago. There were a lot of other weird nonsensical bugs like this too, but that one was the one that caused me the most grief. Lync was been by far the worst piece of chat software I've ever used.

This is still a problem with the latest version! I am forced to use Lync every day and the copy & paste issues make it completely unusable. It is the worst-in-class IM client, worst-in-class screen sharing tool, and worst-in-class, well, everything.

Even basic stuff like keeping track of when you're actually in front of your computer or idle doesn't work properly in Lync. I'll be typing away for hours and it thinks I'm "Idle: 2 hours" to other people in my contact list.

Then there's the whole, "You can't add this person to your contacts because they have been added to too many other people's contact list" problem. W T F ? How is that even possible in this day and age? Sigh.

The automatic idle/away setting needs to go die in a fire. I write some bots that drive the Lync client through the trainwreck of a COM automation layer, and they are always going out to lunch because the client has silently overwritten the presence state that I'm explicitly publishing.

Subscriber limits are also a joke. Although I'd be happy to be able to add contacts to my list, or even at times, see the people that are already there. Turning off the integration with Outlook (because it does awful things, like locking your .pst/.ost files so you can't open Outlook and Lync at the same time...) seems to screw up all the contact list related stuff.

I had to use various versions of Lync for 9 years... copy/paste never worked!

Lync? Oh, Skype for Business. I use Skype for Business on OS X (Oh wait, it's still called Lync on OS X, because they haven't bothered to update their client), and it's borderline unusable.

At the moment, Slack and Skype for Business have different feature sets. Skype for Business is geared towards voice and video conferencing, as you say. But now Slack is moving into Skype territory with video-conferencing services. Given their ability to deliver high-quality clients for multiple operating systems, they stand to make Lync (oops, Skype for Business) obsolete.

Multi-user voice and video chat with screensharing and presentation is coming soon to Slack.[1]

1. http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11147778/slack-voice-callin...

Here's a good one: When my system upgraded to Skype for Business from Lync, it didn't overwrite the old Lync or turn off its 'start app on startup.' Then, when the computer starts up, Lync opens, complains that it's out of date, and then clicking the button to restart as Skype for Business actually just restarts the Lync client... which then complains and asks to restart again.

Brilliant.

I've used and help maintain Lync and OCS, its predecessor. Both were significantly more bloated, difficult to navigate and laggy than Slack is. Additionally, you need SO MUCH infrastructure to support a proper Lync deployment, especially if you want video, voice and PBX. (Yes, Lync comes with its own PBX.)

Lync 2013 was even worse! The message window was laggy in typing words out of the box and every UI animation was choppy. This was on a really beefy Dell (I forgot the specs). I was stuck in this awkward position where I had to defend the implementation even though (a) many people hated it (myself included), and (b) I actually used Pidgin because it was so much lighter (even if user discovery and lookup wasn't as great).

Fuck Lync. I love Slack. I can see why Microsoft attempted to acquire them, and I am super glad that they didn't.

I'm curious about how you found yourself in a position of both hating a piece of software and having to defend the decision to use it.

Why did you have to defend something you hated? Where I work if something doesnt have an advocate, it stops being a product offering.

Just a guess, but probably the sunk cost fallacy. Lync licensing is not cheap, and once you've put in the time to buy it, provision the ridiculous amounts of hardware necessary to run it, deploy it, push the client to end-users, train up on how to use it, it represents a significant investment.

You also forgot "it's probably not his/her choice".

One of the things I like best about Hipchat is that a person who joins the team 5 years later can search back through the history of the chat room forever. Hipchat has acted as an accidental knowledge base for me so many times that eternally persistent chat is now a requirement for anything I recommend. It's possible Lync does this and the implementation I'm using today just isn't configured to be useful in this way. Also, the fact that you can't message Lync users who are not currently online is a big non-starter for me. I've never used Slack, so I can't compare it.

It may be relevant that I often work on remote teams. I can't just say aloud, "Hey, anybody know about foo?" In a Lync world I have to individually message one person at a time and await their response or open a chat with everyone which will go away almost immediately after the question is asked. And generally once people have said their no they close the window, the helpful response will not be viewed by most of the team.

As much as I do hate Lync, the only thing that I remember that is good on it is the message archive that you can find under the "Conversation History" folder in Outlook.

My experience with Lync is different. My current employer is a windows shop and uses Lync for communication.

What I don't like with Lync 1. Screen sharing sucks. Its slow. Is it possible for them to use a technology similar to FreeNX? 2. Does not support multiple-client notification. I use multiple desktop and when you are logged on multiple Lync clients, messages will only go to a single client! 3. OSX client always crashes

What I don't like with Slack 1. Cool UX but sometimes the UI hangs and shows only a white, blank space

You want to really torture yourself? You want to stare into the abyss? Try making a Lync bot. Anyone who was tried will understand what I say when I say it's the worst thing you can possibly experience as a programmer.

+1. This is my life

Yeah, I looked into making a check-ins/coder-reviews and builds bot.

Nope.

As far as I know most people use Skype for business calls. Maybe "team communication" was something that can be done with Skype, but I don't really think it's their core focus.

I think what them not buying Slack is implying is that they will start to try and actually compete with Slack directly. Instead of just internet telephony.

It's also used for video games a lot, but between leaking your IP and allowing esports players to get DDOSed, and just generally being not a great fit, Discord is getting more popular.

I hadn't heard about any data leaks from Slack, so I looked it up:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6946341/slack-has-a-seriou...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/382mao/psa...

What's confusing is the second link is about Skype leaking your IP, not Slack.

When I read teen's comment I thought they were implying that Skype is used by gamers and leaks info.

Microsoft wouldn't let me use the version of skype i had on win 8.1 anymore unless i upgraded it, then wouldn't let me upgrade it unless i upgraded to windows 10. I opted to try the skype web client and had to install some skype plugin. Chrome quite literally stopped working the next day, though I'm not sure if it's related to the skype plugin. At any rate, Slack's user experience has been head and shoulders above Skype.

Oh god, speaking of skype plugins, "Skype Click to Call" is a travesty. First of all it automatically installs itself into your browser whenever you install or update Skype, without prompting you. Second, it does some kind of horribly inefficient regex of every page you visit, looking for phone numbers, massively slowing everything down. With Click to Call enabled in Firefox, loading folders in gmail for me goes from sub-second to ~10 seconds.

Microsoft had their chance and dropped the ball on a lot of things, but they always figure it out.

Skype on OSX looks much better now and I suspect if they're focusing on Skype instead of spending $8B, then you're looking at serious competition.

I have a different experience. It was bad before MS came in and got way worst after - except the icon. The icon now is way more slick! But that won't cut it...

Plus, I would never use it professionally since Skype (and MS in general) are the extreme low in regards to privacy.

The one thing that really bugs me about Skype recently is that it refuses to remember my login. Every time I want to login to the Windows app after a restart or update it doesn't log me in automatically.

There isn't even a "remember me" option on the login page, which I swear used to be there. Since my password is a 1Password generated secure password, I have to go look it up every time.

Now that Skype is under the Office license (and hence must be secure enough to meet HIPAA/HITEC) hopefully the security issues improve dramatically.

Are you sure you're not mixing up Skype, which is just the traditional voip network, and "Skype for business" (aka Lync) which is part of Office but a very different product?

I agree - my Skype on OSX has no ads, the windows version does. So it works good for me.

Skype is most bloated app on my desktop excluding browsers. Currently it takes 169Mb of memory doing nothing.

Skype was actually quite decent years ago. It appears that with every new version it became more and more of a bloated buggy piece of shit. I use it mostly to talk to friends. Havent gone more than a couple days without it seg faulting. I LOVE that quirky sound buffer loop that repeats 'hey u still there' 10 times over as the piece of bloatware crashes. RIP skype.

They only have to do one thing, and one thing only: OPEN. IT. UP. Andi don't mean federation or blablabla: just make it as simple to integrate with as Slack is. Simple API endpoint, basic security and off you go. Boom, victory.

> Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the ball.

The funny thing is, they didn't just have a chance, they had a huge chance. My company can't currently use Slack because our regulatory environment (HIPAA) frowns on our data crossing other people's servers. An enterprise-focused Slack equivalent, hosted on client-owned hardware and with a focus on regulatory compliance, could have eaten a huge chunk of the market.

That would be (maybe?) solved with self-hosted Hipchat.

https://www.hipchat.com/server

I think the have the opportunity, but they are very late to the game.

I used Skype for 6 years for work related stuff, and it wasn't great in terms of chat. Slack is WORLDS better. But Skype works GREAT for my interactions with family. The use cases are extremely different.

My preference would be to keep the current Skype as-is, or maybe even simplify it, and also add a new "Skype For Teams" product.

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