This makes me very nostalgic, but in a slightly sad way, where I remember how much better the real chat experience was back in the day.
This look-alike client struggles to show me messages in real-time. It looks like they only get pulled down in big chunks every few seconds. It also fails to scroll the new messages into view. I don't remember these sort of problems in IRC clients or IM programs of the 90s (though there were many other problems).
In a way I guess it paints the irony of modern computing, where we have several orders of magnitude more in computing power and resources, but that has only enabled us to keep rushing out perpetually unpolished, unfinished products.
It's still a bunch of fun to see a bunch of strangers talking completely unfiltered nonsense in a rudimentary chat room, though!
Vibe-coded or not what grinds my gears in those throwback computer interfaces is how imprecise they are. I the case of Windows, 9x had a meticulous pixel perfect alignment of widgets, great looking 2px thick bevel effects and all the proportions needed to be right for it feel "right". But almost all those throwback attempts, and specially now with AI coding, forget about this and seem to only go as far as thinking having a grey background with some tacky bevel is enough to recreate it.
So many UI elements are absolutely WRONG.
(For reference: https://infinitemac.org)
The state runs on Upstash Redis and is shared across three different frontends (React/Vite deployed on Vercel):
* The standalone chat interface (https://lolchat.rip)
* A Windows 95 simulator (https://56k.rip)
* A Mac System 7 simulator (https://dialup.rip)
Users dialing in from the Mac desktop and users on the Win95 machine end up in the exact same rooms talking to each other.
This look-alike client struggles to show me messages in real-time. It looks like they only get pulled down in big chunks every few seconds. It also fails to scroll the new messages into view. I don't remember these sort of problems in IRC clients or IM programs of the 90s (though there were many other problems).
In a way I guess it paints the irony of modern computing, where we have several orders of magnitude more in computing power and resources, but that has only enabled us to keep rushing out perpetually unpolished, unfinished products.
It's still a bunch of fun to see a bunch of strangers talking completely unfiltered nonsense in a rudimentary chat room, though!