Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Can you so harshly judge Google on abandoning a (lets face it) terrible protocol?

Maybe I could get over the fact that it's so complex -- which puts an unnecessary strain on both servers and clients -- and maybe I could get over the fact that (on average) servers consume 40% more memory than their IRC counterparts. Maybe I could even get over the fact that the spec could change at any moment (the eXtensible nature of it isn't necessarily a good thing, you know).

But what I couldn't possibly in a million years get over is that... it's XML (shudder).

-- To the downvoters:

Here's some previous discussion about why XMPP sucks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2069810

I'm currently working on a project that deals with real time communication (think IRC for the new web) and after fidgeting around with XMPP for a couple of weeks, I gave up on it completely. It's awful. I doubt many people have implemented an XMPP client (or even worse.. a server). Try it some time.

I understand the frustration of working with a fat protocol. What is a viable, open alternative though?

IRC! :P Seriously though, there isn't a light one afaik.

I ended up making my own -- I based it on IRC but wrapped it in JSON. It's stupid simple because chat should be easy.

IRC has no standardised way for handling contact lists (some servers have a bot based implementation), no proper offline messaging support (some servers have MemoServ), no easy way to find which of your contacts are online (WHOIS them all and see which are there, I guess?), and no proper permanent identification for users (they can register with NickServ, but on some servers this still allows users to log in with the same nick when the first user is offline, it just means the original owner can kick the other person when they log in).

It's very good for its intended purpose, but it's not good for IM usage.

IRC is so lightweight, it's what NASA uses for their antarctic weather flights.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/antarc...

antarctic satellite IRC?

best i:line ever.

If you can't name a single protocol that is better at what XMPP does, don't you think "(lets face it) terrible" is a bit of an overstatement? It seems more like a "democracy is the worst system, except for everything else we've tried" scenario.

I mean I can't name something that does what XMPP does is because, well, XMPP does .. like .. everything (or at least tries to). As far as a lightweight protocol is concerned, IRC is much better.

I said IRC semi in jest before because it's very old and there really should be something lightweight that ought to take IRC's place in this web 2.0 world of ours.

Why wrap it in JSON?

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