As another "old fart", I have to chime in here.
On Mon, 6 Feb 2017 17:38:21 +0530, Abhinav Sharma <[email protected]> wrote: >On the other hand, we could still be using IRC instead of Slack/Gitter. >It's good experience that "old" people see through these differences but >new users would be expecting these more and more. Your experience may be different, but I find chat absolutely useless for any kind of meaningful discussion. Take more than 30 seconds to compose a message and the other participants start wondering whether or not you have left. Writing a detailed message may take minutes, or hours. It may be days (or weeks) before you have the required information. With email - or equivalently a posting group - you can take the time necessary to write something concise and meaningful rather than spew a bunch of semi-coordinated thoughts. Then too, I appreciate that people who see my questions and are inclined to help are busy themselves and that considerable time may pass before they have a chance to respond (other than maybe to say "I'll have to get back to you"). <flame> The problem as I see it is not "new" users per se, but *young* users who have been conditioned by texting, IM, etc. to expect immediate gratification. They prefer "rendezvous" communication because waiting for an asynchronous response, by email or whatever, inconveniences *them*. Only rarely do they consider whether an in-person "meeting" might be inconveniencing someone else. The same could be said of the old game of "telephone tag", but many young people today have never heard of it. 8-) </flame> Now, unlike the annoying desktop IM client that your boss insists you leave open, I do realize that the people hanging out on IRC, etc. are there because they want to be ... but (presumably) willing participation can't compensate for the inherent difficulty of carrying on a meaningful conversation there. This message took ~5 minutes to compose: it would not have been a very good candidate for a chat session. ;-) YMMV. Apologies for ranting, but you struck a nerve. George -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/ppji9ctouvdr5bel22hacnf77h31rpkj0c%404ax.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
