The last time I've used Matrix actually, usability was a disaster; took me a while to figure out even just how to login, and that wasn't the only problem.
The UX of communicating with other users was problematic as well. I've tried to establish communications with a certain user, and I have no idea if I succeeded or not (likely not); two separate communications "channels" (I don't know the terminology) were opened with the same user, which is perplexing, since again, this is something I've never experienced before.
I think those two weren't even the only problems I've had.
As for the chat rooms, they work exactly like Discord, which is exactly like every chat client with chat rooms has since the dawn of IRC. You can send a message to one person, or you can join a room and message everyone at the same time.
Easy peasy!
If you don't, then you have no idea how bad it used to be.
Not all all, that’s how much.
Seriously. Again, huge proponent and financial supporter of matrix efforts here; I think they do an a amazing job. But comments like yours are detrimental to what they do.
Also your attitude is super toxic. You’re calling people who don’t value the same things you do, “clueless”.
You don’t really get to bullshit people on HN — you can be super smart and skilled in your field, you’ll far too often come across people with vastly more experience than you. I invite you to think about that.
Again, matrix is great, and I see it as the future of messaging. But it’s absolutely not the “present” of messaging; it’s years behind telegram, and the UX of most clients including the more popular ones is garbage.
Oh and all of matrix is totally open source! Wow. That's how you know you can trust it. If they decide to pull a WhatsApp and move to Facebook, you can just fork and get on with your life.
I like that the telegram client is open, but the sever isn't. Which means I don't really trust them. Same problem as Signal.
Then things like MSN Messenger got popular. Protocols got locked down and screen real estate got consumed. For some reason everyone wanted to use Google Talk (which was horrible but at least spoke XMPP so folks on Pidgin could still chat with their friends). BB messenger taught a few tricks to Apple. Then facebook messenger happened, whatsapp, wechat, etc.
In the background, there were programs like teamspeak and mumble that were trying to do voice chat for gaming reasons. In a way, these were the precursors to Discord who now, for some reason, dominates what people consider a good chat UI. I personally think it's a bloated mess. In my opinion, ICQ had the best chat UI. Because it stayed out of the way.
It's too bad it turned out to be spyware! Hah
