The speed has gotten better recently. It usually sends messages in under 1 second. The UI is still a little laggy when switching tabs but everything is slowly getting more polished and faster.
They are also working on a new server written in Go instead of Python which will hopefully make it faster
I'd blame it on using python to implement the server...
Yes, sure, good for a PoC, but there are reasons ejabberd exists.
Re:IRC turns thirty
by pteraspidomorph on Friday August 24, 2018 @09:05AM
(#17834667)
Some time ago I tried to start a federated homeserver, connected to it and joined the main matrix channel (at the matrix server). Thirty seconds later (IIRC) my client (riot) gave up on the attempt. Nothing showed in the channel. I was told the servers (synapse) were syncing the required information. I checked the logs and, true, a lot of stuff was being sent back and forth.
One hour later, a lot of stuff was still being sent back and forth. I still could not join the channel, and there was still no user-friendly feedback on the failure.
These are fundamental flaws in usability and design that really need to be addressed before the system can gain more widespread acceptance. Have they since been corrected, or have improvements been made to mitigate them?
matrix.org/riot.im seems like a more sensible alternative to IRC - but their systems are overloaded and slow - multi second latency is the norm.