It's not only the web anymore. What about the desktop Slack that can take up to 1Gb of RAM for a "simple" chat client.
There is a long, long history of attempts to make good, cross-platform, native apps. In the late 1990s there was a company called Visix that had such a library that worked on Windows and Unix. There have been Windows implementations of Motif/XWindows. There was of course Java/JWT. These days there is Qt. None of these seem to have really caught fire.
edit: I wrote Mac but I meant Unix
Qt is actually really impressive in my opinion, it's possible to recompile a desktop software for mobile, sometimes without any code change at all.
In-dock notifications and system notifications are my reasons, as well as a dedicated window I can alt-tab to instead of tabbing through browser windows, then navigating to the Slack tab.
(I realize that for some people, "hiding" Slack in a pinned tab may be a feature.)
I know, it's a minor kvetch. But it's a minor kvetch I can solve with a gig of RAM.
If you are happy, no problem. I'm posting for general info.
It does. In fact, it keeps displaying an annoying blue-colored topbar telling you that your life will be better if you enable notifications (fortunately, with the option to snooze it or dismiss it completely on given machine).
Emacs-slack can get you all of that:-)
There's bloatware out there, and this may even qualify, but it isn't just text chat. (Why would you use the desktop client for text chat anyway?)
(I'm talking about the old desktop client, not the new electron based one)