Why does everything need to cater to idiots instead of making them learn? If we continue down this trend we’ll end up with keyboards with a single button to cater to some monkeys out there who can’t manage to use a proper keyboard, at the expense of everyone else’s productivity.

Is this the future we really want?

Because they’re not idiots but rather people with different priorities and backgrounds who were underserved previously. You might disagree that this is helpful but it’s unlikely that you know more about Slack’s users than their UX team. Treating everyone involved with respect is a much better strategy than what you’re doing.

I suspect Slack is aiming for the customers they would like to have in the future at the expense of the customers they actually have right now.

Then provide an option. There's no need to cripple some of your users for the sake of others.

Why does that justify conforming the user to the software? Software, especially web software, has this magical quality of doing different things for different people even at the same time.

> Treating everyone involved with respect is a much better strategy than what you’re doing.

They're not treating the users who prefer markdown formatting with respect at all. It's basically: "fuck those guys, we want to cater to a different audience".

in my experience it is not uncommon for product development to involve assertions that “some of the users are not the most tech savvy”. i’ve seen this as justification for cutting scope, which i can agree with in many situations even if i disagree with the reasoning. over all, cutting scope had been the right move.

that said, i take exception with these claims that the user is “an idiot”. it comes off as arrogant to me.

Is it not what we already have, with touch screens? One big button that can cater to every monkey on the planet?

Wasn't the target audience of Slack, at least initially, tech-savvy IT teams? If they take away plain text and markdown -- or make them harder to use -- they are alienating their early adopters.

Not sure what their user base looks like now, though.

I've seen it used in some surprising places. Last time I had my contact prescription checked, the staff used Slack to communicate between the doctor/assistants in room and the front desk.

The problem is not the change, but that it is not backwards-compatible with the way that the "tech savvy folks" have been doing it for years.

There is no way to opt-out of this change, essentially forcing everybody into entering text this way.

Just give me the option to disable this shitty input.

Why does anyone (tech savvy or otherwise) need to bold or italicize anything.

In my mind bolding/italicizing are nice-to-haves alongside emoji. You wouldn't compromise the entire functional user experience of the central feature of your app for nicer emojis. (at least I hope not).

You literally just italicized "need", and I read it the way you intended it.

That's why tech people italicize stuff.

Please reread my comment. Italicising is, as I said, a nice-to-have. I did not need to italicise need; it's an optional extra in my comment, but I can still communicate effectively without it.

Or, as your reply has highlighted, even with the additional emphasis, people will still fail to read it the way it was intended.

Honestly, the unsatisfying answer is simply because they (i.e. those of us who didn't grow up on IRC, like marketing teams) want to, and are used to being able to do it elsewhere. I'm sure the people who include images in email and set their own fonts and stuff are happy with the upgrade; I can especially relate to that since I used to do some marketing and sales work myself.

I also hate the new input field but I understand why they turned it on globally. But a strong enough want is often indistinguishable from a need.

I myself use them sometimes to emphasize certain parts of the message. They can be very helpful. Many people like bolding certain words in an email as well to emphasize them.

They compromised the part that you already said was not important, not the "entire functional user experience", though?