ircv3 is a stark reminder that while internet chat, as any nuanced human endeavour, is definitely complicated, it is not that complicated and requires neither xml abominations nor json abominations to have it happen
i almost started to forget, huh
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@whitequark interesting. as someone who has implemented IRC message framing by hand I really wish they *would* switch to JSON; such a move was being considered on the spec tracker at one point and I was sad to see it fail. XML would be more of a lateral move but the lack of any structured framing syntax made tags and extensions a much more annoying process to implement
@glyph with my protocol designer hat on i absolutely agree; i didn't put it in the original message because the point would be i think lost on most people, but i don't really have anything against json framing in this context. (sure, it's janky and poorly defined, so's irc's current text framing. xml is clearly not intended to be streamed like that though)
a big issue however is that people start with the idea that they'll make the most extensible protocol, the last protocol anybody'll ever need for anything, and this is what turns it from "json framing" into "json abomination". generally you end up with something that is not even extensible (because there are de-facto expected combinations of extensions and the complexity means only a few implementations dominate) and not that good for the end users' needs
@glyph rigor is helpful in protocol design, but it's not enough to make a bad protocol good; if you start with a protocol designed without taste, adding rigor just gives you a protocol that has an incomprehensible spec and more often than not frozen in time, defined by the dominating implementation
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4@glyph the way i see it, the success of ircv3 is not so much because of extensibility mechanism (though it is, of course, necessary), or the backwards compat, or the immense amount of cat herding that must have happened behind the scenes. those are all matter but they are secondary to "being designed with taste" which is how you avoid needing four thousand fucking RFCs to get to a point where things still don't work right
@whitequark an excellent point and one that is oddly easy to lose track of when one is on the implementing side of things! all too easy to have this attitude towards just about everything
@glyph @whitequark wait a sec, has .. ircv3 gone anywhere?!
