[kybernetyk]

He, for me it's the other way: I like IRC because it's very simplistic. But when I have to do something with XMPP on the protocol level I just want to stab my eyes out because it's a bloated pile of XML.

Maybe it depends on tooling. If you have a language that is married with XML - like Java - you probably will have no problems with XMPP. But if you're doing stuff with C you will love the simple structure of IRC.

[lucian1900]

IRC is extremely idiosyncratic, though. XMPP is much more logical and consistent. Any decent language can deal with trees, although XML is sometimes a little annoying.

The potential problem with XML is the overhead. I'm not sure that's been an issue so far, though.

[lmm]

I've heard it argued that the main reason Wave died was all the XML overhead from being built on XMPP.

[lucian1900]

I doubt that's it. More likely Wave died because they somehow neglected to actually release it. By the time they closed it down, very few people had gotten invites.

[lmm]

Maybe they were stingy with the invites because they couldn't scale up the servers?

[shabble]

XML is a gleaming beacon of purity and grace compared to the CTCP spec[1]. Something that should be relatively simple: "allow very basic RPC using inband signals." The mess of incoherent and mutually contradictory statements about how quoting these messages should happen makes it likely that anyone writing a bot either uses an existing library or still wakes up occasionally in teh middle of the night in a cold sweat.

[1] http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/ctcpspec.html