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        Protocols vs. Apps
        2019.08.09 17:52:14 -03
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        In a Telegram discussion group, people were chatting about
        alternatives to Slack - the chat application. I didn't much of the
        discussion going on, because as I explained there I'm not a Slack
        user and have not understood the appeal of Slack at all.
       
        The Slack users in the group presented the main advantages as being:
        ease of integration with other tools and a nice GUI (app) on
        different platforms.
       
        I come from the IRC world, I can see the value in the threaded-view
        in Slack, but what's left? Ease of integration? How many IRC bots
        and botnets are there? This is very easy to implement.
       
        So I started thinking about the second point: the app.
       
        I like IRC because it doesn't force me into any single app. It
        gives me the protocol and I can choose how to implement my client.
        But the feeling I'm getting from the Slack users is that they don't
        want that. They want *one* app, one *official* app, preferably 
        available on *most common* platforms (including mobile ones).
       
        In the information overload world we live in, people don't want
        choices. Do I have to pick an app? No, too complicated.
       
        Now I'm let wondering if my talks about Site Reliability Engineering
        could be improved with this in mind. I present SRE as a protocol, as
        an API. It's up to you to find the tools to implement it.
       
        What if what people want is not an SRE protocol, but just one SRE
        app? Just a single choice: Yes or No.
       
        Maybe I need to rethink my arguments.