In theory, sure. In practice, I've never had a Slack conversation or video conference which felt as natural, rich, spontaneous or productive as a focused discussion in person. I say that as someone who worked fully from home for five years on a remote dev team.
That's not to say it's not useful. It's better than email, leaves a neat record to come back to and supports asynchronous communication. There are advantages. But strictly speaking, no, you cannot capture everything good and useful about in-person conversation using text and video. I don't think it should be controversial that much of the richness of in-person conversation - tone, nuance, body language, facial expression, spontaneity, speed - can't be meaningfully replicated through remote mediums. You can't get all of these things from a message or video chat. You can get some of them well, and a few others decently, but it isn't the same.
I like remote work a lot and wish more companies would support it. That being said, in my experience when people give honest, cogent criticisms of remote work they mostly receive responses which don't speak to the spirit of their point. In this comment thread, for example, the person you responded to is talking about difficulties. You are responding as if the person was talking about impossibilities. It is (emphatically) not impossible to function as a remote team, and very few people will try to make that case. But in the world we live in and with the technology we currently have, there are things about in-person discussion you will not be able to capture on a remote team.
If nothing else people have different values. Some developers enjoy being highly social when they're working, others don't. Some don't mind interruptions, others do. Many people feel a sense of comfort and empowerment by using Slack or Zoom which makes it easier for them to have productive discussion, for a variety of reasons. Likewise many developers do not get any of the same enjoyment out of a Slack or Zoom conversation that they do from face to face communication.
That's not to say it's not useful. It's better than email, leaves a neat record to come back to and supports asynchronous communication. There are advantages. But strictly speaking, no, you cannot capture everything good and useful about in-person conversation using text and video. I don't think it should be controversial that much of the richness of in-person conversation - tone, nuance, body language, facial expression, spontaneity, speed - can't be meaningfully replicated through remote mediums. You can't get all of these things from a message or video chat. You can get some of them well, and a few others decently, but it isn't the same.
I like remote work a lot and wish more companies would support it. That being said, in my experience when people give honest, cogent criticisms of remote work they mostly receive responses which don't speak to the spirit of their point. In this comment thread, for example, the person you responded to is talking about difficulties. You are responding as if the person was talking about impossibilities. It is (emphatically) not impossible to function as a remote team, and very few people will try to make that case. But in the world we live in and with the technology we currently have, there are things about in-person discussion you will not be able to capture on a remote team.
If nothing else people have different values. Some developers enjoy being highly social when they're working, others don't. Some don't mind interruptions, others do. Many people feel a sense of comfort and empowerment by using Slack or Zoom which makes it easier for them to have productive discussion, for a variety of reasons. Likewise many developers do not get any of the same enjoyment out of a Slack or Zoom conversation that they do from face to face communication.