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> 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

> 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.

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.