I want the expectation that my Slack icon is green to mean that I'm at work and I'll reply sometime today, not that I'm ready for you to interrupt what I'm doing right now.
If I try to talk to Bob and the expectation is that he might take a while to get back to me, it doesn't make any difference to know that he's "available" or "in a meeting". If he's available and coding he might not anwer for an hour. If he's in a meeting and bored he might answer right away.
(VS and VS Code have nice fullscreen views that are great because they also cut down on other distractions even inside of themselves. VS Code also has Zen Mode which pairs really nicely with fullscreen and cuts down on distractions about as much as possible.)
That doesn't quite resolve what I'm talking about. Keeping apps full screen isn't realistic for me, since I'm app switching all the time and often need multiple apps side-by-side, especially when coding. And again, my main goal commenting was just to challenge the very idea that chat status should be minute-to-minute accurate. I don't want that idea to spread, I want people to expect to wait for a response, I want chat to be default asynchronous, and for people to just be happy when they occasionally don't have to wait.
By and large this just isn't a big problem for me, it's a totally minor issue, but would be nice if we collectively have the same expectations. At my work, people mostly do use chat asyncronously and don't start chats with just "hi" waiting for a response. I'm personally relatively happy with my work interactions, but I'd prefer if attitudes didn't shift in the direction the article is advocating.