[dewey]

I'm not sure when you used Slack the last time but there's a lot more than "just a chat app" and it sounds like one of these "I can build that in a weekend" comments.

There's video calling, audio calling, screen sharing, file sharing, permissions, media files sent around. It's not comparable to some old chat app where you only have to get new messages and display them in a chronological list.

[mfontani]

I'm sure the app has to be able to deal with all that, and that unmistakably adds a layer of complexity which ought to exhibit _somewhere_.

On the other hand, when using the Slack app as a simple chat app - formatted text only, a few formatted in-line code snippets, things like that.. the experience can often be abysmal.

Just the other day, I was typing a _text_ message in a private chat, text only - no images, no fancy stuff other than a few bold and italics and inline code tags, and I could visibly measure the delay between typing and the text appearing on the screen.

That should never happen, regardless of whichever other fancy features the app _might_ be able to do.

Never.

[SllX]

> video calling, audio calling, screen sharing, file sharing, permissions, media files

Back before Apple dumped half the features and renamed it Messages, iChat had literally all of these features and then some and it was fast. It was efficient. It didn't run my CPU up to max no matter how I was using it nor how much, and it used very little RAM for an application in its class. It ran very well on hardware that Slack would choke to death.

Slack is the way it is because Slack has other priorities above being fast and efficient, it's not inherent to the nature of a chat app with AV calling, screen sharing and file sharing (file sharing was table stakes for a chat app even 15 years ago or more).