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0 pointssolarkraft2y ago0 comments

> No need; we have the message loud and clear... :|

Almost all communications suggest that you don't, including this message. For years, whenever I'd mention the UX issues I encountered I'd get responses along the lines of "yeah but we're working on XY which will be amazing". Ever since the Riot days the Element (web) client has barely improved its core UX (I'm excited for the 10 year anniversary of the multi-account issue).

> "Matrix sucks because not all clients have good UX"

You may have misunderstood; I'm saying "not a single client has good UX". This is a very personal thing of course, but for me it means that Matrix is barely usable (my favourites are Element X and Hydrogen, but neither is feature complete).

The Matrix 2.0 talk & accompanying efforts are very exciting to me, though. Element X is phenomenal (the first client I actually enjoy using) and the main thing that got me back into caring about Matrix.

The whole reason I'm back here complaining is that I have hope again that one day Matrix can be pleasant to use and I want to help making it happen. I want Matrix to be amazing so that I can tell people to use it without getting laughed at.

> It's probably fair to say that matrix-rust-sdk is the flagship now, not matrix-js-sdk.

I have heard about this (great technical choice, btw!) from side-channels like conference talks, but the official matrix website still shows it as one of multiple libraries in beta and the JS SDK as stable. Using it on the web seems unsupported (the WASM bindings are only for the crypto module). On a Matrix live episode I had (I think) heard hints at the JS SDK eventually becoming a front for the Rust one, so I figured I'd go with that.

Well, as a sibling comment points out, the documentation page very prominently states that it shouldn't be used. And where does the link to the updated documentation go? Of course, a tutorial for registering a Matrix account.

The reason I'm (hopefully productively!) complaining is that I'm emotionally invested again. I want Matrix to be good and I'd like to somehow help making it happen. For now this probably means getting together with interested people at Camp.

0 comments

tentacleuno2y ago

> JS SDK as stable

To play Devil's advocate, the documentation for the JS SDK was exponentially worse quite a while back. So much so that, in some cases, you'd have to view the actual implementation code to understand how to use it.

This was made even worse by incomplete TSDoc which didn't cover the entire API surface, meaning using the SDK in TypeScript was a matter of casting the client to `any`, checking the implementation to see what a certain method required, understanding how the method worked with no documentation whatsoever, and using it without any editor suggestions etc. to help you. (yep, long sentence)

Not sure if it's still as bad but wow, that was one of the worst JS libs I've come across in a while. Despite its shortcomings as a platform, the Discord ones were a lot more comfortable to use (Eris, Discord.js), as they had actual documentation.

I'll finish up by saying I hope they've learned that developer experience is very important for such a platform. Look at Discord; bots were one of the things that put them where they are today. Being able to programmatically integrate into a platform is crucial to its success as, without it, you have something nobody knows how to actually use and integrate with.

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