

Ask HN: Best IM for Programmers - Meiscooldude

Hello Nerds!<p>I was curious, what everyone thinks the best instant messenger for programmers would be for small teams in a company.
======
DaFranker
The key: Whatever works for you.™ Each team's needs will vary.

But that's probably not very helpful. By "for programmers", I assume you want
something that can be relatively unobtrusive when needed, that keeps
conversation logs, and that can be linked up / hacked with for whatever
particular tricks you need. And by "for small teams", I assume you mean you
want something that can handle chat rooms with joining and leaving of users at
any time. Maybe you even want it to remember and show what other users
discussed while you were gone.

For this, the most common de facto choice is Hangouts. Other software, some
embedded in larger software solutions, is also used with varying degrees of
satisfaction. My personal favorite is Slack(1), and it seems to be gaining
popularity quickly. Other (relatively known) examples include Campfire(2),
Atlassian's HipChat(3), FlowDock(4), and so on.

A google search for variations on the theme "team collaboration chat", mixing
up the keywords "realtime" and "logs" and "persistent" as needed, can bring up
more options than you have time to try. Pick a few that seem to do what you
need and try them out.

[1] [https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/) [2]
[https://campfirenow.com/](https://campfirenow.com/) [3]
[https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat/](https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat/)
[4] [https://www.flowdock.com/](https://www.flowdock.com/)

------
upofadown
Internal jabber/XMPP server. Then everyone can use the client of their choice
in whatever environment they happen to be working in.

There are even jabber clients for Emacs and VIM...

------
lholden
Beside the options DaFranker mentioned... There is also good old IRC. Its
something that I've used for many _many_ years of development chat. It also
has the advantage of being something that your company can run internally.
Channel logging is not terribly hard either... While it's certainly not as
batteries included as some of the newer chat systems... One can achieve many
of the same things depending on your IRC daemon and bots.

------
aserr
Well, tech's new darling is Slack, so I would definitely give them a try. If
you're using any part of the Atlassian stack I would look at HipChat as well.

~~~
Meiscooldude
Wow... I've heard of Slack mentioned, but I can't believe I've never actually
looked into it till now.

------
Cieplak
IRC

------
jhwhite
We use FlowDock. I like it. Might want to take a look at Slack.

------
tartuffe78
We use FlowDock, it's pretty comparable to Slack

------
BillAtHRST
none

------
kendallpark
Slack.

------
kttmrt
We use Slack.

------
jhildings
irc of course :)

