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Yeah, the thing is, this needs some kind of IRC bridge, with auth. If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication

Yeah, the thing is, this needs some kind of IRC bridge, with auth. If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication, and I gather many would rather use their very rich tooling built on IRC than check another website.

sotojuan 10y ago
> If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication I doubt it. I see less and less developers using IRC outside of quick help and instead using Slack. A lot of languages and techs have both a Slack and IRC... it's hard to know which one's more active sometimes which is annoying.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I haven't seen Slack used much outside of organizations. However, IRC is everywhere.
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    Everywhere as in...? IRC isn't going anywhere for sure, I use it (prefer it to Slack), but its usage has diminished greatly to very niche groups such as anime subtitling communities and programming languages/techs. Of the latter, many are either moving to Slack or also have a Slack with more people on it. I also hear less and less developers using or talking about IRC in general. Elixir (language), Ember (JavaScript framework), Elm (language) all have more active Slacks than IRCs. Facebook's React moved from Slack to Discord, and the community has never cared for or used their IRC channel. There's still fairly active IRCs like the JavaScript, Go, Clojure (I think), and the Node ones, but they're becoming the exception. I think IRC is popular in your group of developers and interests, but for many people it's somehow considered ancient. On an interview I once mentioned IRC and the interviewer (in his 40s) was surprised it was still a thing.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      shrugs Then again, look at the stacks you're looking at: they're all relatively new, and most of them are frontend, and thus more likely to jump on the new shiny. ##c on freenode has >1k users as I write this. Although that's probably also an outlier. Personally, I'm hoping that Matrix becomes the new standard, if we ever get one beyond IRC. IRC is showing its age, and Matrix seems to be the most practical and levelheaded group doing work on the problem. As for Slack, I'm pretty lukewarm on it, and kinda prefer IRC.
      - sotojuan 10y ago
        I stand corrected! See my reply to the sibling comment.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Yeah, that's the kind of distribution I was expecting. I'm glad sibling could get some hard data on it, though.
  - danneu 10y ago
    IRC isn't everywhere. Even a large channel like freenode's #node.js has maybe 15 regulars, myself included. Meanwhile, Elm's Slack channel has more regulars than #node.js. IRC is kept alive by a small holdout. I'm one of those people, but it's no mystery to me why nobody else uses it when I'm paying irccloud.com or running weechat-ncurses on a VPS just for basic features everyone expects from a communication tool.
    - chrismorgan 10y ago
      “Large” means #rust on moznet, which normally has around a thousand people in it, and has scores of regulars actively chatting.
      - sotojuan 10y ago
        From the reply to my sibling post and yours, I stand corrected. It seems IRC is big with older languages like C and related (as in, a similar domain) ones like Rust[1]. JavaScript and new, web related languages like Elm are more likely to use Slack. [1] I'm curious as to whether that IRC channel is the only "blessed" Rust chat out there. The problem with other languages is that the community makes a Slack for them even though there's an IRC channel for them already and most new users start only going to the Slack.
        chrismorgan 10y ago
        There are a bunch of substantially less trafficked, though definitely regularly active, channels for Rust: #rust-offtopic, #rust-internals, #rust-beginners (this one is recommended in the official documentation and is well-traficked), #rust-osdev, several others too.
        steveklabnik 10y ago
        With Rust, I've only heard of some people making Slacks. I don't use Slack, but at least one person mentioned on IRC that the Rust slack they were in was pretty much dead, so I'm not aware of this happening to Rust yet. We'll see as time goes on. There are something like 50 #rust- channels on Mozilla's IRC and ##rust on Freenode, though. I've also heard of quite a few very active JavaScript Freenode channels, though Slack does have a lot of inroads there depending on which particular segment of the community you're into.
forgottenacc56 10y ago
Why do you assume your preference for IRC is everyone's preference?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I don't. I see a lot of IRC users on HN and other forums. Slack seems semi-common internal to orgs, but IRC seems to be by far the most active realtime communication medium used by devs externally. People liking IRC is a reasonable conclusion to draw.
umanwizard 10y ago
> If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication Mine happens to be Facebook Messenger.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...huh. FBM appears to be a centralized two-way textual communcation system with a strong identity system: It's essentially the anti-IRC. What do you use for multi-way textual communication, or textual communication with weak identity (these often go hand-in-hand)? Or do you just not use either?
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    I should mention here that I work for Facebook. (Though I would also like to make clear that this post and anything else I do on HN is my personal opinion and does not represent Facebook in any way) You are mistaken: FBM supports multi-way communication. For work, I use Messenger almost exclusively. For personal stuff, some combination of Messenger, Google Chat, and SMS/MMS. I do log on to IRC once in a while, mainly Freenode, but it's far from "primary". Why does the "average" person ever need weak identity communication? I mean, I'm glad it exists and it has a niche, but why would you expect that to be someone's main way of interacting with people?
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      shrugs I don't know. It happens. Anyways, there is an issue with FBM's multi-way: It's designed as an invite only system: you have a list of people you want to talk to multi-way, and you talk to them. This is fine in certain contexts, but in other contexts, the "room" abstraction used by IRC is more effective, as it allows you to have conversations with a strictly defined topic, but not strictly defined participants, the opposite of FBM. FBM's system is fine for small-scale multi-way communication between known parties, but that's not what people use IRC for.

sotojuan 10y ago

> If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication I doubt it. I see less and less developers using IRC outside of quick help and instead using Slack. A lot of languages and techs have both a Slack and IRC... it's hard to know which one's more active sometimes which is annoying.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I haven't seen Slack used much outside of organizations. However, IRC is everywhere.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  Everywhere as in...? IRC isn't going anywhere for sure, I use it (prefer it to Slack), but its usage has diminished greatly to very niche groups such as anime subtitling communities and programming languages/techs. Of the latter, many are either moving to Slack or also have a Slack with more people on it. I also hear less and less developers using or talking about IRC in general. Elixir (language), Ember (JavaScript framework), Elm (language) all have more active Slacks than IRCs. Facebook's React moved from Slack to Discord, and the community has never cared for or used their IRC channel. There's still fairly active IRCs like the JavaScript, Go, Clojure (I think), and the Node ones, but they're becoming the exception. I think IRC is popular in your group of developers and interests, but for many people it's somehow considered ancient. On an interview I once mentioned IRC and the interviewer (in his 40s) was surprised it was still a thing.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    shrugs Then again, look at the stacks you're looking at: they're all relatively new, and most of them are frontend, and thus more likely to jump on the new shiny. ##c on freenode has >1k users as I write this. Although that's probably also an outlier. Personally, I'm hoping that Matrix becomes the new standard, if we ever get one beyond IRC. IRC is showing its age, and Matrix seems to be the most practical and levelheaded group doing work on the problem. As for Slack, I'm pretty lukewarm on it, and kinda prefer IRC.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      I stand corrected! See my reply to the sibling comment.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Yeah, that's the kind of distribution I was expecting. I'm glad sibling could get some hard data on it, though.
- danneu 10y ago
  IRC isn't everywhere. Even a large channel like freenode's #node.js has maybe 15 regulars, myself included. Meanwhile, Elm's Slack channel has more regulars than #node.js. IRC is kept alive by a small holdout. I'm one of those people, but it's no mystery to me why nobody else uses it when I'm paying irccloud.com or running weechat-ncurses on a VPS just for basic features everyone expects from a communication tool.
  - chrismorgan 10y ago
    “Large” means #rust on moznet, which normally has around a thousand people in it, and has scores of regulars actively chatting.
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      From the reply to my sibling post and yours, I stand corrected. It seems IRC is big with older languages like C and related (as in, a similar domain) ones like Rust[1]. JavaScript and new, web related languages like Elm are more likely to use Slack. [1] I'm curious as to whether that IRC channel is the only "blessed" Rust chat out there. The problem with other languages is that the community makes a Slack for them even though there's an IRC channel for them already and most new users start only going to the Slack.
      - chrismorgan 10y ago
        There are a bunch of substantially less trafficked, though definitely regularly active, channels for Rust: #rust-offtopic, #rust-internals, #rust-beginners (this one is recommended in the official documentation and is well-traficked), #rust-osdev, several others too.
      - steveklabnik 10y ago
        With Rust, I've only heard of some people making Slacks. I don't use Slack, but at least one person mentioned on IRC that the Rust slack they were in was pretty much dead, so I'm not aware of this happening to Rust yet. We'll see as time goes on. There are something like 50 #rust- channels on Mozilla's IRC and ##rust on Freenode, though. I've also heard of quite a few very active JavaScript Freenode channels, though Slack does have a lot of inroads there depending on which particular segment of the community you're into.

forgottenacc56 10y ago

Why do you assume your preference for IRC is everyone's preference?

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I don't. I see a lot of IRC users on HN and other forums. Slack seems semi-common internal to orgs, but IRC seems to be by far the most active realtime communication medium used by devs externally. People liking IRC is a reasonable conclusion to draw.

umanwizard 10y ago

> If you're an HN user, IRC is probably your usual mechanism for realtime textual communication Mine happens to be Facebook Messenger.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...huh. FBM appears to be a centralized two-way textual communcation system with a strong identity system: It's essentially the anti-IRC. What do you use for multi-way textual communication, or textual communication with weak identity (these often go hand-in-hand)? Or do you just not use either?
- umanwizard 10y ago
  I should mention here that I work for Facebook. (Though I would also like to make clear that this post and anything else I do on HN is my personal opinion and does not represent Facebook in any way) You are mistaken: FBM supports multi-way communication. For work, I use Messenger almost exclusively. For personal stuff, some combination of Messenger, Google Chat, and SMS/MMS. I do log on to IRC once in a while, mainly Freenode, but it's far from "primary". Why does the "average" person ever need weak identity communication? I mean, I'm glad it exists and it has a niche, but why would you expect that to be someone's main way of interacting with people?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    shrugs I don't know. It happens. Anyways, there is an issue with FBM's multi-way: It's designed as an invite only system: you have a list of people you want to talk to multi-way, and you talk to them. This is fine in certain contexts, but in other contexts, the "room" abstraction used by IRC is more effective, as it allows you to have conversations with a strictly defined topic, but not strictly defined participants, the opposite of FBM. FBM's system is fine for small-scale multi-way communication between known parties, but that's not what people use IRC for.