Most people who use Slack haven't ever used IRC professionally (or at all) - I've shown IRC to people who love Slack and I usually get "Ugh, it looks so old fas

Most people who use Slack haven't ever used IRC professionally (or at all) - I've shown IRC to people who love Slack and I usually get "Ugh, it looks so old fashioned and difficult to use" as a reaction. Probably the same people that never used a terminal and have the same reaction at first. And then you teach them a thing or two, let them evolve and weeks later when you less expect it, that same person is thriving on the terminal he hated initially. I have seen this happen a couple times... windows people saying linux is awkward. or even that i3-wm is awkward, until they get to learn it and they completely change their mind. Slack has its merits, but plain IRC also works fine. The same people that prefer slack because they never really tried IRC, might say they prefer slack because it allows them to write BOTs. BOTs in irc is easy, there are 3 kind of bots: - bots that interact: User types something in a channel or via private message. The bot will receive that message and the user that typed it. then it will parse the message and take an action. Examples of interaction messages: -- msg to bot: google this: "time now ?" (then the bot connects to google and makes a query and replies to this message): UTC 10h20 -- msg to bot: reboot - bots that say stuff: You are on a chatroom and then all of a sudden a bot joins and says something ie. "Your new website has been updated". OR, "Someone made a pullrequest on github, please somebody go there and accept it" - a mix of those 2: the bot will say stuff and also accept/interact commands IRC is really simple. The bot simply reads text and takes action. Or, just take action and talk on the channel. Its completely diffrent from slack bots because it is simpler it will not need the programmer to set up a WEB SERVER in order to receive messages from slack. Seriously.. the bot should connect there just like the user does and read messages, parse and take action. Long live IRC =) BOTs that say stuff works this way: You are on a channel and then all of a sudden a BOT joins and says: "The new release of your website has been successfully updated"