from the keep-what-works-and-pitch-the-rest dept.
A Developer's Inside Look At Where Slack Started -- And Where It's Headed:
In 2020, Slack nearly doubled its paying customer base over the previous year, thanks to the pandemic, and was recently acquired by Salesforce for over $27 billion. But according to Justin Hardin, senior software engineer at Slack, the product originally started as a gaming platform that failed to take off.
"They unfortunately ran out of money and had to lay people off, so they pivoted by asking, 'Which piece of our product works?' And that was the chat aspect," Hardin says on the latest episode of Decoded, OutSystems' podcast for the next generation of developers.
But the app's friendly human tone was inspired by its gaming roots.
"They kept the writer on who was creating the dialogues for the games, and instead had her do the dialogues for the product," he says. "That's how you have this enterprise chat platform with help messages and onboarding that's in a more conversational tone, which helped define the product experience."
[Ed Note - I'm not surprised by this. Slack always felt like a part of a gaming platform to me. - Fnord]
(Score: 1) by melyan on Tuesday April 06 2021, @08:54PM
Money won't be need after ego. Unless it's in a MMORPG.
(Score: 1) by Snort on Tuesday April 06 2021, @09:29PM (31 children)
And the slow grinding process to monetize slack content begins.
Discussing new switches, you might start getting calls.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by melyan on Tuesday April 06 2021, @09:43PM (29 children)
You ignored my other comment because of The Elephant In Your Brain. https://www.elephantinthebrain.com [elephantinthebrain.com] .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @09:57PM (4 children)
Or nobody is interested in your ego shtick, which is looking more like boring spam now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by melyan on Tuesday April 06 2021, @11:09PM (3 children)
The ultimate taboo. Ego can't face itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:21AM
You are boring.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:08AM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by melyan on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:34AM
First of all. Sup. It would seem suicide and perhaps some actions in war or protest or for family would contradict.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @09:41AM (23 children)
Interesting. I might give that a read. I don't agree with calling things like self-interest "ugly" or describing how humans actually behave as dark and scary. It's just what we are. Evolutionary biology just is what it is.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 07 2021, @11:54AM (21 children)
It can be ugly. Lord knows people who decide to just plop down and wallow in it are ugly as hell, not to mention dangerous to the survival of the species. Hint, hint...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Funny) by melyan on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:20PM (9 children)
Azuma. What do you want to ask of me--who is without ego? What do you want to know of what humankind can become?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @12:02AM (8 children)
I've already got some idea of what humankind can become and I want no part of it. We really are limited by our biology, just nowhere near to the extent people who choose to wallow in the worst aspects of it insist. I don't think we're getting off this rock, for example.
This is one reason I'm not reincarnating again if I have any say at all in the matter. We're reaching the limits of what we are capable of by nature. I'll try and be the best human I can be until my death, but in the grand scheme of things, that's not going to save us as a species, and it's just possible we don't deserve to *be* saved.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by melyan on Thursday April 08 2021, @12:22AM (1 child)
For you to perceive how I think is like a dog's perception of how you think. Would you want to be upgraded?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @11:56AM
If it turns me into an insufferable chuuni creepo like you? No, thanks. You have high INT but low WIS and a CHA score that makes me look like Marilyn Monroe!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:00AM (5 children)
[...]
So which is it? Are we reaching the limits as the wallowers claim or not?
My take is that we're already well beyond the limits of our biology. A few weeks back I was driving 80 MPH, merely to get from point A to B. Up to about 170 years when sufficiently fast mechanical travel was developed [wikipedia.org], going 80 MPH meant you most likely were seconds from death, because you were in some sort of accident or disaster.
For another example, two or three decades back, I implemented one of the Mersenne prime finders on computer. Over a single night, I generated all of the Mersenne primes [wikipedia.org] (they are all of the form two to a power of a prime minus one, simple examples are 3, 7, and 31) that anyone had computed by hand plus a little more. In other words, many year of hard work done overnight as a lark.
All that happened despite remarkably little change in our biological limits over the last few hundred thousand years (Homo Sapiens has been around for 300k years).
Thus, it makes little sense to speak of our biological limits when discussing what we're capable of by nature.
(Score: 1) by melyan on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:56AM (4 children)
algo? language?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @07:36AM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by melyan on Friday April 09 2021, @11:41PM (2 children)
Love to see it on GitHub or something.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 10 2021, @01:03PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by melyan on Saturday April 10 2021, @10:27PM
Do you have any code out there? Most open source code is 95% ego, but I know you and would be interested in whatever you had.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 07 2021, @10:29PM (10 children)
Anyone saying that don't make decisions primarily out of self-interest is delusional or simply lying. It's a core instinct and it ensures your day-to-day survival. I blame the Christianity inverted-morality everyone subscribes to for demonizing it. It's annoying talking to self-described atheists and asking them about their core values, and finding out they are basically Baptists that refuse to pray to daddy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @12:04AM (7 children)
You "libertarian" types are toxic assholes, you know that?
Listen and listen good: enlightened self-interest is a thing. It is entirely possible for decisions that you would (no doubt with a sneer) claim were falsely-altruistic actually do result in better life and living for the decision-maker and others. The only zero-sum game in this universe is entropy; within the bounds of entropy, we are *not* limited to "if I gain someone else has to lose and vice-versa."
The fact that this is not the case is the only reason civilization exists. Conversely, and this is a direct consequence, the "rational selfish actor" types like you and your kind are the direct enemies of civilization.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:04AM (6 children)
crafoo said originally:
Sounds like enlightened self-interest to me.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @11:59AM (5 children)
Except missing the "enlightened" part. The tricky thing about this is, the unenlightened self-interested actions are usually easier, quicker, more gratifying, require less thought, and more immediately appealing to the person contemplating them. It takes effort and will (and not being a psychopath, so you're proper fucked from the word "go").
You and your kind will go to extreme lengths to justify stupid, shortsighted, self-gratifying actions--in a word, unenlightened self-interest. It brings to mind the old quote about how many a man could have gone to paradise with half the effort he put into going to Hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @01:40PM (4 children)
This is just a No True Scotsman fallacy. Sorry, you're not in a position to lecture someone else on what the enlightened part is.
In other words, here's a great example of how you're a terrible source of enlightenment, pigeon-holing people into imaginary classes of psychopath.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:02PM (3 children)
Stop acting like a psychopath and I'll stop calling you one. The worst part of all this is, the things you say that make you look worst are things you casually toss out like any other sentence, things you don't even consider are making you look bad. To normal, sane people, though, it's the equivalent of someone suddenly coughing up bubbling putrid black goo and howling at the moon.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:23PM (2 children)
Sorry, that is profoundly dishonest. A common feature [psi.uba.ar] of antisocial personality disorder is that they act like normal people in order to manipulate or deceive them.
So in particular, normal people act like psychopaths/sociopaths because some psychopaths/sociopaths deliberately act like normal people. Your central assertion is not falsifiable!
Notice also that's a lot more symptoms than that: impulsiveness, irritability and physical aggression, recklessness, consistent irresponsibility, and lack of remorse for harm caused to others. I exhibit little of that behavior though how would you show that in a SN post? Again, not falsifiable!
If you try to play the game of cherry picking a few symptoms based on extreme posts, well, back at you on that one. You fit that above list a little better than I do.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 08 2021, @11:53PM (1 child)
That definition sounds exactly like your posts, especially when you fuck up and let something slip.
To be clear, I don't put you in the same basket of nutshittery as Runaway, since you at least don't seem to want to start a civil war and don't have (or are smart enough to keep a lid on...) any festering subsurface racial animus. But your economics and most of your policy stances are things only someone whose ego has its own Schawrszchild radius could support. If you were intellectually disabled or otherwise below-average in terms of intelligence, it could possibly be partly forgiven as lacking either information or the cognitive firepower to make use of the same, but it's clear you're not suffering from a deficit of brainpower.
The only conclusion, then, is that you know full well what the results of your ideas would be if implemented and don't give a damn.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Friday April 09 2021, @12:41AM
And yet you can never point to a specific case. It's all vague accusations.
Sorry, I just don't buy that. It's not like I'm proposing a solution that requires khallow cooties to make everything work out.
Or as I've repeated said, that I think the results would be pretty good for everyone.
(Score: 1) by melyan on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:53AM (1 child)
It's not a primary motivation. It's the only motivation. And the only is to increase social status. Free will is an illusion. Every single decision exists to increase social status.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 08 2021, @02:26PM
(Score: 1) by melyan on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:17PM
Well, the whole things is about recursion. Calling it "ugly" is ugly. Calling calling it "ugly" is ugly. You have to break the recursion. This is what I did, without ego.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @09:55PM
Perhaps they could data mine communications to give Leadership advance notice of trouble-makers and those looking for new jobs. This will boost productivity as all the lazy scumbags are rooted out. The warming effect on the remaining employees will usher in a period of higher profits and worker contentment.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday April 06 2021, @10:36PM (4 children)
Here I was expecting an article about slackware [slackware.com]
or perhaps even slack itself. [slackwiki.com]
But no, this is about some stupid app.
Alright then, carry on.
Arik leaves in search of something interesting.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:11AM (3 children)
You forgot your stupid pointless hard-on-the-eyes monospace font tag.
...who are you and what have you done with the real Arik?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:42AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:26AM (1 child)
Be careful he has a porpoise army.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday April 09 2021, @05:16AM
I want to believe it. But you'll need to provide some corroboration.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:29AM
I don't want an informal, conversational tone on a piece of software I'm forced to use for work as an employee. You can't just bolt on some thin corporate representation of the essence of friendliness and expect it to motivate people or make them feel comfortable. It's patronizing and creepy.
On a video gaming platform, it's all good though--although even then I'd prefer the chatty stuff is in-game and not part of, say, the configuration software, an application store like Steam, or even a chat application actually.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:33AM
Its "paying customer base" is the companies who are too clueless to setup an open-source equivalent.
This means it's the same companies who are already paying for Microsoft Office.
Which in turn means they will soon realise they are already paying for Teams for sufficiently equivalent functionality, and can stop paying double.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Wednesday April 07 2021, @12:52AM
Glitch the Game
the start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6O5QXj6n18 [youtube.com]
the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfzE_fIxEVg [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @01:11AM
It's going to get round-filed. It's part of a massive, yet futile, LEA sting operation.
(Score: 2) by Acabatag on Wednesday April 07 2021, @02:09AM
Slack started with Glitch [youtube.com], which was a non-violent MMO that was really a blast to play.
Unfortunately it was based on Flash so it had no future. And Stoot and his gang mostly used it as a launch to make something bigger anyway.
Butterfield also was a founder of Tumblr, wasn't he?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @03:57AM
nomsg
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @07:42AM
you know. that ancient thing that thought "#" was a good way to designate topics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 07 2021, @06:18PM
you're not a developer, you're a fucking whore. shove slack up your ass!