Ben Lovy

Posted on Jan 12, 2020

Who uses IRC?

#watercooler #irc

Just curious who out there still uses this as a primary tool. IRC was a huge component of my middle school-to-high school experience, so ~2003-2010, but I haven't really touched it since except for a few one-off questions.

Where do you lurk?

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Top comments (28)

Jason C. McDonald • Jan 12 '20 • Edited

I spend a lot of time in IRC. I can guarantee that Slack is nothing like it; it carries none of the culture! I've met some of my closest internet friends via IRC.

I'm on Freenode IRC, especially #python, #learnprogramming, #python-offtopic, #ubuntu-offtopic, and several others.

Jason C. McDonald • Jan 12 '20

Actually, this is relevant:

IRC Netiquette and You

Jason C. McDonald ・ Dec 12 '17 ・ 11 min read

#productivity #culture #irc #community

David Wickes • Jan 12 '20

I still enjoy bouncing in and out of the programming rooms on freenode - the Lisp peeps are super nice and happy to explain stuff.

And whenever I did Rust in always had the official IRC channels open. But they're all being shut down ☹️.

IRC's abandonment by the community is a crying shame. People have exchanged an open standard for the ability to share cat GIFs and emoji reactions. People have, once again, disappointed me.

Jason C. McDonald • Jan 12 '20 • Edited

IRC's abandonment by the community is a crying shame.

First I've heard of any wholesale abandonment. (Or did you mean Rust only?) Some projects have dropped IRC, but many others just use bots to bridge the chat platforms. The largest communities are still there! Freenode IRC's #python and #ubuntu, and OFTC's #debian are just three examples of the core of the community living on IRC.

I guess it's a bit like Usenet now; still very much alive and well, but mostly occupied by people who aren't obsessed with shiny new tech. ;)

By the way, the unofficial ##rust is still there, no doubt occupied by the refugees from #rust. That's how things go on IRC!

David Wickes • Jan 12 '20

still very much alive and well, but mostly occupied by people who aren't obsessed with shiny new tech.

My kinda town 😁

Dave Cridland • Jan 12 '20

Good news - XMPP is a perfectly good open standard for exchanging cat GIFs, and we are working hard to providing emoji reactions, too.

David Wickes • Jan 12 '20

😂😍👍

Swastik Baranwal • Jan 12 '20

Discord

Ben Lovy • Jan 12 '20 • Edited

I've used this for specific person-to-person situations. #explainlikimfive the larger community?

EmNudge • Jan 12 '20

It will always vary. The platform is targeted towards gamers, but the organizational tools overtime far surpassed Slack to the point where there are many programming-related servers.

Some programming languages, such as Rust, have an official server on discord (meaning the devs are there as well). There's usually a separate, massive discord server for every major language. Great place to ask for quick help.

I personally frequent a couple of JS and webdev-related servers. I really enjoy helping people and talking about webdev with some other, more or less experienced devs.

Anwar • Jan 12 '20 • Edited

Gridsome has its Discord channels, and I like it very much. There is also plugins to show folks you are "playing" on VSCode, very cool 😁

Josef Biehler • Jan 12 '20

I know these days where IRC was very popular. The good old days were people who want to code had no tutorial videos on YouTube :D if I remember correctly I had written a IRC bot in PHP. Nowadays I would choose NodeJs for that :-D

Moon Wolf ☽🐺 • Jan 13 '20 • Edited

I use IRC when I've some free time (Hexchat for Windows). I log onto Freenode, and join Windows, Android, and Astronomy channels.

I love that IRC has had such staying power and not fallen by the wayside, like newsgroups.

Jesse M. Holmes • Jan 12 '20 • Edited

I don't log into IRC anymore, but I still visit bash.org for the laughs.

Edit: And it is a relic that reminds us that the internet has, from the beginning, been inhabited by phobic trolls and people with a dark sense of humor.

Dave Cridland • Jan 12 '20

I wrote an IRC client, once, and used Freenode a lot from the early days (I was on occasional chatting terms with Lilo, indeed). But increasingly, I found IRC just too basic - though I do sometimes use it via gateways from XMPP.

These days I mostly use XMPP, though I have to use the bad stuff to keep in touch with various people who don't.

Prince-Alarming • Jan 20 '20

Started with IRC, then tried the java chat thing back in the day, moved to bulletin boards(before they started the political correct stuff and called them forums), then did the Myspace thing. Graduated(or dare I say stooped down to)Fakebook. Did the twitter thing(didn't care for it). And tried a few others. All in all I still visit IRC, when I have time. Same with Discord.