It isn't terribly popular, but Zoho's Cliq is pretty much a clone. There's a few things it doesn't do as well, and others things that I actually prefer (multiple channels on screen, for example)
I'm a coder and have been using slack for years with success. Not one single one of your complaints has ever been an issue for me.
Whenever I want to post a code snippet, I just use the triple backtick technique, like:
```
code goes here
```
You can also insert code in the middle of a comment with a single backtick around it: `like so`
For the most part, though, I keep my code in the Git repository, and it's pretty rare that I actually need to share a bunch of code in Slack messages. If I want to pair with another developer I just open up Tuple or Zoom and do a screen share.
Syntax highlighting in a message is really powerful if your message includes a series of diffs.
```diff
- Remove this line
+ Add this line
```
But even if developers are fine with highlighted code snippets inside message, that still leaves the buggy snippet tool which adds newlines when you copy-paste from it, not enumerated, or bulleted lists, no hyperlinks except verbatim, etc. The no hyperlink part is annoying if you have to link a couple or more long urls and placement matters.
Edit: To add to the list, since slack doesn’t use real markdown it is impossible to included backticks in code samples (e.g. `` ` `` is not a thing, and neither is ```` ``` ````).
Yeah if I feel like my snippet could benefit from syntax highlighting I’m probably doing it wrong. I can’t imagine other people would appreciate my giant walls of text/code in a chat channel. I can use a gist, screen share or link to a specific line in a repo if I need to.
Email. With per-topic mailing list server (that is: send a message to whoever you like and cc the list). Self-subscribe (with approval for sensitive topics) for any email list. Archive to a threaded web-based archiver. Search-index it.
Everything you need: High speed communications. Long-form, if you need it. Only getting notified about things you care about. Written discussions about things like how design or business plan decisions were made to be perused at leasure by new hires in the future (Knowlege-base).
For a company that got going for being better than email, it's shocking to me how email (done correctly) is still better on almost every dimension (except asking what people want for lunch).
Completely and utterly disagee. I'm not even a big fan of slack, but email is -terrible-. I can't tell you how many lists I'm on now where someone poses a question and 50 people all reply all with the same thing. And that's not counting the people who probably started a reply then saw the flurry and didn't send, or the people who replied privately. That's one huge benefit to slack in well organized channels. You pose a question to a group, and generally if one person starts typing, you wait to see if your reply is needed.
In my case, for one, the engineering orgs were generally not much larger than 200 people. For another, the "To:" person(s) usually responded, but everyone else got cc'd with the list and then the list could follow. And, for me, finally: I find discoverability in a knowledge-base-way to be sub-optimal compared to an indexed (and threaded!) email list. Kind of like how Linux devs organize themselves.
And, maybe, finally, I'm old and have been using email since 1983 and it fits my workflow (or rather: my workflow adapted to email?). The get-to-it-or-it-is-gone thing with #slack bothers me, which seems great for asking people what they want me to bring back for lunch, but not for much else besides asking who broke the build.
Again - that's my take. I understand that other people don't prefer long-form debates/discussions by email and want an IRC-like answer to their immediate question.
