alt Hacker News>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.
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Identities. Creating an identity in XMPP is an absolute mess and requires domains along with approvals. At least in IRC this isn't complicated.
My own preference goes to NOSTR, just a set of public/private keys as identity and nothing else needed.
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
Other people provided some info:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772968
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133082 (article and discussion)
But TL;DR:
* It's hard to even parse, XMPP uses an uninterrupted XML stream. * The contents are often baroque and complex * Standards are a mess, and stuff that should be in core isn't * Data loss is possible * Protocol wasn't made for mobile devices * Multiple devices are terribly supported * Data loss is possible
From my attempts long ago, and other testimonials, writing an XMPP client is a full time job of solving weird problems that shouldn't exist in something better designed.
That there are issues with feature differences is a problem with the protocol.
Good protocols are opinionated and make concrete choices.
Extensibility typically leads to compatibility issues like the ones you are describing.