Awth13 and I have been working with XMPP today. A long time ago, we spun up a Matrix server. We've been comparing and contrasting the experience and the 'philosophy' of it (if you can call it that).
I'm not intending to reinvent the wheel of the XMPP vs Matrix debate here, just reflecting on how it represents modern computing. On the one hand you have a very stable, mature old messaging protocol and parsing mechanism. Simple, highly extensible, reliable and securable. On the other hand, you have a highly feature rich "global JSON database with an HTTP API and subpub semantics" primarily deployed via Docker images, with every bell and whistle affixed to the base image by default.
Some think that Matrix is more user friendly and intuitive to set up. I think I disagree. It has so many moving parts, with the lines blurred between modules and monoliths. Someone recently said to me that containerized deployment is "as simple as it gets". I just don't understand that sentiment. Of course I understand the benefits of being able to deploy complex systems in a highly scalable and replicable way (in this case, .yaml configs). But at the same time I have to ask the question - does the system need to be so complex that it warrants this in the first place?
I'm not sure I have some clever point to make here. Just a frayed idea floating around in thought soup about the tradeoff between elegant simplicity and powerful rube goldberg machines. I just wonder how things will be if we treat the former as a first principle a little bit more and try to go back to basics on how we talk to the computer.
c0co
Made some updates to this little site. Coming together nicely, in the most boring sense of the word.
Wrote up the specification for a purr for those too lazy to run dig and just take a look at the demo.
If I had half a brain - which I assure you, I do not - I would figure out a way to post to here and to my purr simultaneously. The one problem with purrs is that if you're working on someone else's DNS server and have to log in to a web GUI to enter new entries it's pretty annoying. Being able to inject to both this web blog and the rlog on my purr would be much better.
c0co
contact: cc[@]c0co.ch
purr: > dig TXT c0co.channel