My point is that Telegram does the same things, but is much, much more polished.
If I reply to a message on Telegram, the original message is summarised and linked. Slack starts a weird new "thread" which hides the subsequent conversation in a difficult to access backwater.
If I want to edit a published message on Telegram, it's right there in the context menu. On Slack I have to do a complicated dance... hover over the message so that a hamburger menu appears, click on the menu, then click on the edit option. Click-drag just doesn't work.
If I want to search through message history on Telegram I click the search icon, type my search term and there are my search results. On Slack, again it's hidden behind a different hamburger menu. More click-click-click, and eventually I see my results, obscuring the current conversation! But not all of the results are there, apparently you have to pay for that.
Reactions are hidden behind a clunky hover-click-click interface.
...I could go on and on. It all kind of works, but it feels unfinished, like it's a prototype that's been bashed out in a weekend. Or it feels like a clunky web-app a-la Discord.
Threads are idiotic on slack, agreed. I just ignore them and manually snip the line i'm replying to, prefix it with > and write my reply below.
What do you do on Telegram when you want to post 2 pages of logs? Slack has this "text snippet" feature that can take a long text and post it collapsed by default, and whoever wants to see the details can expand it inline or save.
Can you pin a message to a Telegram channel, to have reference info handy?
Can you upload large files to Telegram and have them available 2 years later? (On the paid version of Slack).
Do you have a Telegram git or github integration plugin that will automatically notify about the commits in the project's channel?
They don't do the same things and your use case is not Slack's.
> Or it feels like a clunky web-app a-la Discord.
You're saying Telegram clients are native apps? I strongly doubt it :)
I'd definitely bucket Telegram and Discord together (one as IM, other as this... Slack-like thing, I really don't have a better name for this category) - in that both are ridiculously overstimulating, with stickers and animations, and shit constantly moving or notifying you or ... my brain can't handle prolonged exposure to either, it's just too much stimulation (and not of the useful kind).
Slack is an improved irc and so is Discord now, in spite of it launching as a better and free teamspeak...
Slack has better support for people working together on something, Discord has better support for memes and emoji and stuff like that.