This is feature that is/was present in other applications, such as ICQ and talkd.

And it's awful. Typing stuff makes me think about it, and I change it constantly. Then you end up having people change thoughts mid sentence when they see what another person has started typing in response to what they haven't even finished yet. It's like having everyone talk at once.

Apparently it wasn’t everyone cup of tea but personally I loved it. It makes for a different sort of conversation - more live than the asynchronous back and forth messaging of most apps today. You can often reply to someone while they’re typing their message - and if you guess right they can stop typing and move on to read / reply to your response in turn.

I’m not sure how well it works in groups but 1-on-1 it feels more like a phone call than a messaging app; except it’s over text, it seamlessly transitions to offline asynchronous messaging if someone isn’t there and you can both “talk” (type) at the same time.

Just make it an option duh!

But it was an option wasn't it?

You could write in draft mode I think, and people couldn't see the result

When I'm annoyed with something I've received on any given platform, I find it cathartic to type out a really sarcastic/vicious response to then just delete it all and reply with something a bit more balanced/respectful. Live updates make that impossible.

ITS had :UNTALK (around 1982)

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/41180/AI_WP_2...

>Another useful comlink program is UNTALK. UNTALK is similar to TALK but does not work across machines. However, on a display terminal, UNTALK splits the screen horizontally and allows the two people to type at the same time on their part of the screen.

You should know commercial chat solutions (for customer support, pre-purchase inquires etc) do this - agents can see what you’ve typed before hitting send.

I never checked, but I always assumed this. It just makes sense given time is probably the most important factor in those interactions.

Also in Slack and I find it creepy, too. And I think it's awkward that you can only turn it off on the receiver side.

In Slack you only see that they are typing but not what, or did it change recently? Wave editing was a precursor of the Google docs collaborative editing so you could actually see characters one by one.

It's been years since I've used Wave, but I'm sure it had a setting for that just below the text field.

I'd just type elsewhere and paste it in when it's ready if it concerned me.