Thread

1. Conlectus · 1790598456 · focus · HN ↗

   There’s a specific downside to LLM-based development that people can get neck deep in a new project without interfacing with the existing work in the field.

   In this case, this is basically a poorly specified implementation of half of XMPP. Of course, I half expect the LLM would have mentioned that at some point, but the repository does not.

   1. dale_glass · 1790601737 · focus · HN ↗

      Unfortunately XMPP is an absolutely terrible protocol. IRC's not much good either, but at least it has the excuse of being ancient and limited in what it wanted to achieve.

      I don't know how it just happens that sending text messages to people can manage to result in specs that are painful to implement.

      1. monkeywork · 1790605151 · focus · HN ↗

         >Unfortunately XMPP is an absolutely terrible protocol

         Can you provide more details here? I've never seen an issue with the protocol at all, more issues with feature difference between servers depending on what they have decided to implement or not.

         1. packetlost · 1790605308 · focus · HN ↗

            Most times I've seen complaints about it, it boils down to "XML being yucky" and the extension component model being difficult to write clients for, which is true but not really a fault of the protocol, it's more of an inherent tradeoff of supporting opt-in extensions at all

            1. dale_glass · 1790605785 · focus · HN ↗

               I don't have that many problems with XML myself, but XMPP is weird even in XML land, because it tries to do XML all the way.

               For instance, it works as a constant, uninterrupted stream. You never close the document until the disconnection. Which means you absolutely have to parse it with a stream parser.

               It could have been something sensible, like a document per message: "Here's 300 characters of XML document: <xml>....". But nope.

               And what&#x27;s up with this? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xmpp.org&#x2F;extensions&#x2F;xep-0394.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xmpp.org&#x2F;extensions&#x2F;xep-0394.html

               1. tecleandor · 1790607894 · focus · HN ↗

                  OMG, that XEP is extremely and unnecessarily complex. Just do, I don&#x27;t know, markdown.

                  That made me remember IBM JSONx... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibm.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;en&#x2F;datapower-gateway&#x2F;10.6.x?topic=20-jsonx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibm.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;en&#x2F;datapower-gateway&#x2F;10.6.x?topic=2...

                  1. F3nd0 · 1790609359 · focus · HN ↗

                     What’s so complex about it? From what I gather (after skimming the document just now), you attach an extra element to a message which says how to style which parts of the message, from codepoint n to codepoint m, essentially. At least conceptually, that seems really simple and straightforward.

                     Are there more elegant or natural ways to do it? Probably. But when you say ‘extremely complex’, saying ‘codepoints 7 to 15 should be bold’ is not what comes to my mind.

                     1. amenghra · 1790612098 · focus · HN ↗

                        The following example (from the spec) seems quite fragile:

                            <message>
                              <body>This XEP supports many things:
                            * inline markup
                            * code blocks
                            * lists
                            * and possibly more!</body>
                              <markup xmlns="urn:xmpp:markup:0">
                                  <list start="31" end="89" ordered="false">
                                  <li start="31"/>
                                  <li start="47"/>
                                  <li start="61"/>
                                  <li start="69"/>
                                </list>
                              </markup>
                            </message>

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