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Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

• zzo38computer 7y ago
  Yes, I still use IRC. I use it on Freenode and also a few others. I would like to have server-side logging (and have implemented it in a IRC server software once experimentally), but nobody else seems to have that. (It has nothing to do with the protocol, but rather, with the implementation.) Since now some people are using Discord instead, I am not communicating with them. IRC is much better than Slack and Discord and Matrix. (I also think that they should make this Hacker News available with NNTP, too.)
• jeannekamikaze 7y ago
  What alternatives would you propose? If it is Slack and the other proprietary abominations designed to take away your freedom, then the choice seems pretty obvious to me.
• tfont 7y ago
  Yes. I hate Slack with a passion. I am on 14+ servers and it's completely impossible to manage, mostly because of memory. Recently, I've decided to make a chat client (desktop) natively with C++ for Windows, Linux, and OSX that has a smooth layout like the original AIM (very easy to use). Including, with future plans to do audio/video chats and screen sharing including file sharing. I just hope that within time, I will be able to release something to the world.
• drake01 7y ago
  Yes, irssi is still my favorite. Channels I like hanging out on #django, ##linux. Keeping an eye on ii. This: https://tools.suckless.org/ii/ https://tools.suckless.org/ii/
• LukeB42 7y ago
  https://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd https://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd
• e12e 7y ago
  I don't, but I use weechat (wee-slack) for 99% of my desktop slack. Less obtrusive than the stand alone and web clients. And way less resource hungry. I don't use slack outside of work, but I always have the idea of using weechat more - for irc and/or other protocols. https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
• codyb 7y ago
  All the time. Easily the best forum I’ve found for asking a quick question on occasion. Not every community is super lively but there’s some good ones and it’s nice to see the regulars after all these years. And it’s nice that after a while just by taking a break and checking the conversation out, you’ll start answering people’s questions too. Always nice to help someone out. Freenode will always have a place in my heart and an open window on my desktop.
• scaryclam 7y ago
  Absolutely. Every time I want to learn about a new tech or have questions about an open source project, my first port of call is freenode. I've had some excellent help and discussions, even in the last couple of months.
• jfk13 7y ago
  Yes -- though my company is looking to move away from it sometime soon (sadly?), so my use will decrease. It won't disappear entirely, at least for now, as there are other uses outside the company's control.
• pmoriarty 7y ago
  Absolutely. Freenode is still running strong, and is probably the best place for live support for a ton of open source projects and Linux distros. I've tried various other popular chat options (like Discord and Telegram) and have been really frustrated by some of their limitations -- particularly in regards to logging, where afaik there's no way to get the logs off their servers and on to my own machine for archiving, offline browsing/searching, advanced regex searches, etc. There's also no way to get the logs if you're not logged in, or if you ever lose access to the servers for some reason. Discoverability on these alternate chat platforms is also really poor. At least on IRC I could always try typing in a channel like #gentoo or #linux or #debian or #ocaml or #scheme or #lisp or #emacs or #vim, etc, and have a pretty good chance of these subject-related channels existing. On Discord and Telegram, I have to find a link to the channel somehow or get invited. Which is great for private channels, but for channels that you want anyone with an interest in the subject to join, it's simply awful. That said, they do have some advantages, like integrated images, video, and audio.. and if you need those features, then vanilla IRC certainly isn't good enough. But for me, who does 99.9% of my chatting in plain text, those other features are very rarely necessary and IRC suits my needs just fine. Also, with IRC one could at least always post links to external image/video/audio hosting sites, if you wanted to share that sort of media... which, again, is good enough for me most of the time. In fact, things like videos and images poping up all over the place on chat platforms like Telegram and Discord are just annoying most of the time anyway.
• superkuh 7y ago
  Of course, Ryan @ Co-Founder of Advertising Your Business.io. Since 1995 and my usage has only increased over the years.
• AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  Tech support, guidance on opening bug reports, etc. There are some projects where there's not an open forum to post questions, but opening an issue or filing a bug report will immediately get your head bitten off by an angry dev unless you've read X number of docs, combed through closed issues to make sure it hasn't been asked previously, reproduced the issue, provided a GDB stacktrace of the issue occurring, etc. IRC support channels can provide some immediate front-line support and allow you to ask basic questions without being told to go die in a fire.
  • ryeguy_24 7y ago
    I guess double edged sword. People can use it however they like (which is great) but also not always open to newcomers who don't fall in line yet.
• xfitm3 7y ago
  All the time. We have an IRC server at work, but it's less popular than Slack unfortunately.
• yborg 7y ago
  IRC remains in use in the Japanese manga/anime fan translation community on Rizon.
• kashyapc 7y ago
  Yes! I'm an active IRC user for professional open source work (and personal projects) for the last 10-ish years. And still going strong. What many people say IRC "lack" in comparison with Slack (or whatever new-fangled tool of the day is) are its strengths. What I value in IRC: lack of clutter, simplicity, bloat-freeness, open standard, and not least of all, blazing fast, among others. Sure, IRC has its limitations, and is not suitable in certain scenarios. But is still shines brightly when it comes to distraction-free, text-based communication. (I'm also hoping the Matrix protocol takes off.) Obligatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/ -- Team Chat
  • jeduardo 7y ago
    I also hope Matrix takes off. I have been using riot.im for some time to check if it could replace the many chat applications one is forced to use these days (FBMessenger, Slack, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc). It does have its quirks but I'm finding the ability of having e2e-encrypted chat with multiple parties in a way I can move across devices quite useful. It also does support some more modern features like sharing pictures, files, and emojis without major issues. Didn't bother to find and try a text-based client yet, although matrix does seem to have an IRC gateway (of course): https://matrix.org/docs/projects/as/irc-bridge.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/as/irc-bridge.html
    • Arathorn 7y ago
      weechat-matrix (https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix) is an excellent text-interface client with full E2E support, fwiw :)
• edmundhuber 7y ago
  Yes. I co-run a small, quirky IRC network/channel. We welcome all peoples who enjoy fun and discussing programming/hardware/technical stuff. Details here https://irc.darwin.network/ https://irc.darwin.network/
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• samch93 7y ago
  Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
• ori_b 7y ago
  Yes. Most of my contact with friends is through IRC.
• carterschonwald 7y ago
  yes, i use it a lot!
• yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  I have Freenode #haskell open pretty much all the time. There's some exceptionally clever people in there, and they're all polite, friendly, and generous with their time. Also the #postgresql channel is great. I'm using the weechat client, which I found much easier to use and more polished than irssi.
• rocky1138 7y ago
  Every day. I run my own "thelounge" instance, which is a node app sitting on one of my VPS servers. It's web-based and running all the time, so it's very easy to read stuff I missed while I was "offline".
  • orliesaurus 7y ago
    How can you open up thelounge without compromising everyone on the same box? Is there any in built protection in thelounge against people abusing your service to enter irc? Basically I don't want to get myself K-lined for someone else's wrongdoings
    • rocky1138 7y ago
      I use private mode and log in.
    • MaxLeiter 7y ago
      You can use private mode which requires logging in. For public instances, you can contact the server about setting up / using WebIRC to handle multiple connections from the same box.
• aewens 7y ago
  Yes! I am one of the IRC operators for the IRC network Tilde Chat[0]. It is the main source of communication for the Tildeverse[1] community which is a group of Linux/BSD servers that offer free shell accounts to whoever wants one. It's a niche little community, but if you like unix and chatting on IRC then you'll feel right at home. [0] https://tilde.chat https://tilde.chat [1] https://tildeverse.org https://tildeverse.org
  • ryeguy_24 7y ago
    Tilde was just mentioned in the front page story of Wired. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-defense-difficult-industry/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-defense-difficu...
• Furiosity 7y ago
  I've been constantly logged in to IRC at home since 2002 or so. I am active nearly every day. At work most of the coordination between programmers is via IRC--even though we're all in the same room. So yeah, IRC is still used. Anecdotally the population of some popular channels on freenode that I frequent has never been higher.
• guidoism 7y ago
  If you work for a company that provides a popular chat service and your team is one of the main dependencies then you use IRC while working on finding and fixing the cause of the outage. It’s not sexy but when everything else fails it does the job. Source: I worked on one of those teams.
• detaro 7y ago
  Yes. While it certainly has it's faults, it provides simple basics and has a wide variety of clients (which IMHO is the biggest downside of many alternatives, in that they either do not have alternative clients or the alternative clients do not function quite as the main ones)
• shodan757 7y ago
  Absolutely. On Freenode, #rhel, ##electronics, #django, #mercurial, #mysql, #python are all great.
• LinuxBender 7y ago
  Off and on I've used it for technical discussions, questions, etc, around various open source projects. I've shut down all my IRC servers. Most folks moved to Discord or Slack.
• edsiper2 7y ago
  Yes
• NuSkooler 7y ago
  Yes, lots of people. Discord has become popular, but not enough & there are often bridge-bots running. I imagine Slack is in a similar boat.
  • ryeguy_24 7y ago
    I haven't gotten into Discord yet. Isn't it a pain that there are so many Discord servers and you can't just have one server with all the channels (ala Freenode)?
    • nroah 7y ago
      You have to see Discord servers as if they were IRC channels, and Discord channels as if they were conversation threads.
    • Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
      Not at all! It is normal to be connected to multiple servers at once, and the UI makes it easy to keep track of them. As the other commenter said, it is much better to think of each server as a channel. A Discord server is typically dedicated to a single topic or organization. My old World of Warcraft guild has a Discord server. On that server, you'll have separate channels for general chat, announcements, and several voice channels for groups.
• nroah 7y ago
  I do. Much better than the alternatives, especially if you value your privacy and being able to use whatever client you want.
  • ryeguy_24 7y ago
    What client do you use? Haven't found a good one for Mac.
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      +1 for Textual, and for building it from source.
    • spapas82 7y ago
      I am behind a firewall at work so I use web clients. I used to use https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/ https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/ but now I've moved to https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ (the free version).
    • MentallyRetired 7y ago
      I use Colloquy on the mac.
    • yborg 7y ago
      Colloquy. Desktop version more or less hasn't been touched in 8 years, and it remains the best Mac client. Also has an iOS version that is more recently maintained.
    • nroah 7y ago
      Textual is good. It costs money but it's GPL'd so you can build it yourself for free in a matter of minutes, there are plenty of tutorials online.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • darkpuma 7y ago
      I use weechat on a mac. Works just fine with iterm2. I press cmd-~ and it pops up on screen.
• prophesi 7y ago
  Freenode is still pretty active. I self-host an instance of The Lounge[0], which basically acts like an IRC bouncer + an account system to easily get friends/coworkers to use IRC. I primarily use it for giving/getting help on technologies and open-source projects that I'm using. [0] https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge
  • _wmd 7y ago
    While Freenode may not compete with Facebook, it's still pretty huge :) There are 99 users and 84066 invisible on 32 servers 36 IRC Operators online 16 unknown connection(s) 53438 channels formed I have 5185 clients and 1 servers 5185 5972 Current local users 5185, max 5972 84165 94773 Current global users 84165, max 94773 Highest connection count: 5973 (5972 clients) (476397 connections received)
  • leetbulb 7y ago
    I've been using The Lounge for a while now. It's honestly great. Being able to access it over VPN while on mobile is a nice bonus.
• Foxboron 7y ago
  I do! I have 91 windows open in my current irssi session. I think only 50 of those are actual channels and the other half is active or dead queries between people. I use have slack for some group of friends, but I have been less active after they removed the IRC bridge. I try to avoid Discord. IRC is also used for my core group of friends, some of them I got over when we started University together as I couldn't stand Facebook messenger. A lot of time is also spent on various open-source projects, mainly Arch Linux but also security related channels and misc projects.
• dvtrn 7y ago
  You want to see one of the most fascinating uses of IRC in a focused, dedicated community let me introduce you to the player group known as the "Fuel Rats" of Elite:Dangerous[1]. They use IRC for far more than just a hub to congregate and socialize, 100% of their actual dispatch operations are planned, coordinated and excuted on IRC. If you run out of "fuel" in game, and you need a Fuel Rat to come rescue you, you do it in IRC. Dispatch talks to you in their IRC channel, other dispatchers are communicating in NOTAM[2] like notation with pilots out 'rescuing' other players. It's amazing to behold. [1] https://confluence.fuelrats.com/display/FRKB/Rescue+Standard+Operating+Procedures#RescueStandardOperatingProcedures-IRCandCommunications https://confluence.fuelrats.com/display/FRKB/Rescue+Standard... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM Disclosure: Fuel Rat 2010-2013, Retired.
  • greyskull 7y ago
    I've been a Fuel Rat client in the past. It's one of the coolest things I've ever experienced on the internet, and they have it down real smooth too.
  • nvusuvu 7y ago
    What game is this from?
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      Elite:Dangerous https://www.elitedangerous.com https://www.elitedangerous.com
  • urda 7y ago
    That's a really cool group I had never heard of! Thank you for sharing this.
  • r1nkgrl 7y ago
    Elite:Dangerous wasn't released even in alpha form until 2013. I assume you were a fuel rat for Elite 3. When was the origin of Fuel Rats in the franchise? Have they existed since the first game was first released in 1984? Or only after IRC came around a few years later? Very curious about the history of Fuel Rats in the game series, as well the history of technology these used to communicate.
• curiousfab 7y ago
  I am logged into several channels 24/7, in one (with a close group of friends) pretty much without a break since about 1999. I also frequent some channels with technical topics. IRC appeals to me by its simplicicy, just like good old plain text email does. It is a great design that has outlived many of the better, more colourful or more modern alternatives, and will continue to do so. Like everywhere on the internet there is a resident braggart, a few weirdos and a few ever silent lurkers in every channel, but after 20+ years on this medium my mental filters are well honed.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• spapas82 7y ago
  Yes I use it all the time especially when I'm learning a new thing or researching a strange behaviour of a program. I prefer much better the freedom to ask/discuss anything and the fast ask/reply/clarify cycle of IRC than fe stackoverflow with its strict rules. Freenode has channels with people that are very helpful and friendly. Some channels I am frequent and would recommend: #django, #elixir-lang, #kotlin, #android-dev. I also visit (and get help) #mysql and #postgresql. Actually I wanted to write a blog post to urge people to learn about and visit IRC, but I hope that this HN thread will suffice... Try IRC and you won't regret it!
  • ryeguy_24 7y ago
    I will try these. Some of the ones that interest me seem to have a ton of people but such little chatter. IRC still reminds me of the days of AIM where people congregated online. People are always "online" with their phones these days so it's nice to use IRC to get that "online community" feel.
  • scaryclam 7y ago
    I advise anyone even remotely curious about how to use postures better to get on and lurk in that channel. Some incredibly useful tidbits come up.
  • ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    For someone starting from scratch, are there any “best practices” for getting on safely and anonymously? How do I hide my IP?
    • cjpb 7y ago
      At the very least you want to mask your IP, which generally requires you register with the nick services for the server you are connecting to. e.g. https://freenode.net/kb/answer/cloaks https://freenode.net/kb/answer/cloaks
    • giancarlostoro 7y ago
      I pay for and use irccloud. You can probably use a VPN on top of that if you dont want even then to have your IP. You can also setup a connection bouncer on a server. Basically you tell it what ircd to connect to and it connects to it for you masking your IP. This is what IRCCloud does under the hood tbh.
• orpheline 7y ago
  I wish I could; it's blocked at work, for fear of bots...
• Arkanosis 7y ago
  I'm on Freenode from time to time, mostly for Wikimedia and a bit for free software support as well. I'd be there all the time if I had more time. I've seen a lot of people switching to XMPP, then Facebook, then Gitter, then Discord, then Slack, then… At the end, the result is mostly a fragmented community because not everyone is moving to the next trendy protocol, and there is an increasing number of alternatives. Sure, there's some merit in lowering the effort for newcomers, but it doesn't fully outweight its cost, IMHO. IRC is the only protocol that remains widely used in the (very) long run and doesn't die when it gets out of fashion (see: it's been out of fashion since before fashion protocols were born). I'm closely following Matrix, though, because of the bridges (especially the IRC bridge, obviously).
• dustfinger 7y ago
  I use rcirc [1] on Gentoo from exwm [2]. I frequent freenode, oftc [3]. Honestly, I love irc. Also, exwm changed how I work in a very positive way. Next, I want to try the Next browser written in Lisp [4]. Although I have never used it, I know of people that use Bitl Bee [5] to interface with slack from emacs irc clients. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rcirc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rcirc [2]https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm [3]https://www.oftc.net/ https://www.oftc.net/ [4]https://next.atlas.engineer/ https://next.atlas.engineer/ [5]https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BitlBee https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BitlBee
• k_sze 7y ago
  I used to be on Efnet and DALnet and ETG servers a lot in the 90s and 00s for anime. Now I’m on Freenode all the time for #python, #django, #ubuntu, #debian, etc. It’s a good place to ask quick questions. But even more importantly, I use it for rubberducking (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging), especially when I’m digging deep into an issue in a particular piece of software and I don’t expect my colleagues in the office to (immediately) understand what I’m talking about. I’m even in ##latin to learn, you guessed it, the Latin language.
  • dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
    Woah thanks for the rubber duck link, that’s fun. But wouldn’t unit tests be even better? You “explain” the code line by line via unit test, except at the end of the exercise you have some tests! I’m only suggesting this because in the past few years I’ve basically discovered this approach to rubber ducking (writing tests when confused/something not working, using said tests to even step through code in a smaller context) and it’s been great.
  • ksaj 7y ago
    Weirdly this is the first time I've hearing the term, even though it is something I've practiced for years. Basically I was taught that if you ever really wanted to understand or proof something, teach it to someone else. Thanks! Now I have a term for it.
• death_syn 7y ago
  I still use it as my primary form of communication. Only one job in my professional career have I NOT gotten from IRC. I use it mainly for conversational chats these days, though I still do get/give support on Freenode occasionally. I know Slack is the new darling for these things, but their WebUI is so inefficient compared my IRC muscle memory. Wee-slack is great for the Slacks I can use it on (but nearly none of the community Slacks have open API slots for it.)
• eiro 7y ago
  yes because it's free, simple to extend, low bandwidth compliant. there are some problems people still want to solve (see https://ircv3.net/ https://ircv3.net/ and https://irc.com/ https://irc.com/)
• mindcrime 7y ago
  Yep. I'm on Freenode quite a bit. #ai, #agi, #startups, #machinelearning, #trilug, etc.
• jodrellblank 7y ago
  I use a chatroom which is bridged between IRC/Slack/Discord. I stuck with IRC for a while out of hate for Slack and then I moved to Discord out of hate for Slack. General experience is, the worst inputs come from the IRC interface. Occasionally that is a regular with a long running connection, or a genuine interaction with a normal person, but handwavingly-mostly the IRC side is someone who has clicked on a web IRC gateway, doesn't know what they're looking at, wants a "give me the codes" style answer or just wants to rant, doesn't respond to people when they offer help, and doesn't stick around. Most people who join IRC and stick around, join and ask "oh there's a Discord, how can I get an invite?". The only genuine spam I've seen came from the IRC side, things like religious spam/flood messages. The biggest restrictions on things like inline-code are that the IRC interface can't deal, because it risks getting rate-limited for "flooding" the IRC servers because one bot user is echoing all the chat from every other user. Markdown which works well enough in Slack and Discord is left as Markdown markup and makes examples look broken in most (all?) IRC clients. The slack and Discord can usefully impersonate each other's users with a hint that you're looking at text from a relay, IRC can't so all the text actually comes from a relay bot user which breaks nick highlighting, nake autocomplete, channel connected user lists. The Slack experience is still user-hostile and indefensibly poor, I yearn for the days when typing some plain text didn't have 5-10 seconds of lag all over the place, but the Discord user experience side is tolerably fine in almost every way, and better in many ways, except the ideology of it being proprietary and closed source and slurping data into the cloud forever. I leave my IRC bouncer running, and for a while I used it to join other IRC channels. But IRC increasingly felt like that's all anyone does - typical experience of finding a random channel - dozens of users and nothing but join/parts for the past couple of days. [just wants to rant / hate for Slack - this also includes me, btw]
  • caf 7y ago
    ...typical experience of finding a random channel - dozens of users and nothing but join/parts for the past couple of days. Often you'll find that if you ask a question and wait long enough for people to notice, that'll spark quite an active conversation.
• freeopinion 7y ago
  <3 IRC, contemplating Discord
• Zash 7y ago
  Connecting to IRC via Biboumi from XMPP
• xxpor 7y ago
  We use IRC heavily at work. Slack is banned since it's communicating though a 3rd party service. I prefer IRC anyway.
  • test1235 7y ago
    What setup do you use? Do you manage your own servers? What about non-devs?
• silversconfused 7y ago
  I collaborate (er, troll and shitpost) on Freenode in #postmarketos, #reprap, and #devuan
• elagost 7y ago
  I use it most days - I have a Quassel (https://quassel-irc.org https://quassel-irc.org) core set up on my raspberry pi, and connect to it with my phone/laptop. Official support communities for most Linux distros, general chat, and more technically-focused communities are there. It's the only form of 'social network' I use - otherwise I just don't use social networks.
• cheez0r 7y ago
  Every day, still keeping EFNet alive.
• devin 7y ago
  Google does. Their SREs are big fans as I understand it.
  • ionwake 7y ago
    Weirdly I found their GAE channel unfriendly and unhelpful when google took my startup offline as part of non sensical upgrade process
• muppetman 7y ago
  I still use IRC heaps! I idle on efnet just for old times sake (I hang out in #LiCe and #epic, I still maintain the LiCe IRC Script which was popular back in 1994. Yes, 25 years ago. I hang out in PfSense, Proxmox and rspamd to offer (and get) assistance with those OpenSource projects. And a number of the private trackers I use still heavily rely on IRC as a means of communication. So yea, it's still used. But it's certainly dwindling.
• alxmdev 7y ago
  I almost got into IRC ten years ago, when I was active in a programming community that used it in addition to their message board. The idea of having to keep my computer on all the time in order to stay in the loop, and having to learn yet another set of arcane commands for a chat window, was a big turn off then. I wouldn't even consider it today unless there was a specific need to use it, sorry.
  • ViViDboarder 7y ago
    I got in for a similar reason. I was put off by that for a while too, but then someone introduced me to ZNC. One of the members of our core team set up a server and it was smooth sailing after that.
  • 300bps 7y ago
    There are probably over 100 IRC clients that don’t require arcane commands and you certainly don’t need to keep your computer on all the time. mIRC is an IRC client that has been around for 24 years and makes IRC very easy. I stopped using IRC about 20 years ago but I got a lot of knowledge out of my time on DALnet and then Undernet.
• ronsor 7y ago
  Yep. I run a server on a small IRC network.
• nickjj 7y ago
  Been using it since the late 1990s. Freenode is still very active for tech.
• tombert 7y ago
  I love going on Freenode, simply because the people that lurk on any given project's room have always been incredibly helpful to me, and really nice too. I am in the #clojure room semi-often (asking silly questions), and occasionally the Haskell room if I'm up for learning a bit more about theory. I like how simple IRC is, but I get why so many people have an aversion towards it. In the age of Slack, telling people to install Weechat and connect to a server manually is kind of scary. I largely embrace the transition to something new, but I do have an issue with the open-source world moving to a proprietary platform. I wish XMPP were more popular, since I think a federated chat system with an open protocol is pretty neat, but sadly I fear that the Slack hype-train might be a bit too far-gone.
  • WilliamEdward 7y ago
    We want modern and good features. That's why we use slack. We say this every time one of these IRC threads shows up.
    • ryeguy_24 7y ago
      What modern/good features do you like the most? (i.e. what are the things that draw you to Slack)
      • afarrell 7y ago
        The biggest feature for me of Slack is newlines. The ability to break up a piece of text visually so that I can structure a complex question or explanation for more readability is incredibly valuable.
      • WilliamEdward 7y ago
        Going through the list of nuances would take a while, but i think it's fairly easy to see just how different IRC is to Slack from the get go. For one, setup is stupid easy compared to IRC. Making a server? Click of a button. It comes with a bot. I can add people directly. I get the feeling you or someone is going to use this to argue how all of this can be achieved on IRC in some way, but it's just too much work. If you're someone who is trying to make open source chatting cool again, please respect opinions like mine regardless of how stupid you think they are. If IRC isnt at least as easy to use as Slack, i'm not using it for the same things.
• hestefisk 7y ago
  Yes every day.
• fouc 7y ago
  It's my understanding that https://www.irccloud.com https://www.irccloud.com is a good contender for getting a slack-like experience for irc, i.e. good mobile client etc.
  • lbotos 7y ago
    I was an IRCCloud customer for a while. It was really good, and I left because my friends switched to a slack. :( Idling in IRC was 10x better than slack.
    • fouc 7y ago
      I feel like there's gotta be a way to re-create the irc/slack interface with the right sort of scraper setup.
• dangayle 7y ago
  I love IRC, particularly #freenode. I really detest having to first search out then go through the whole process of signing up for yet another Slack group.
• Myrmornis 7y ago
  I try it from time to time for asking questions on what I think will be technical forums, with mixed results. (Yes, I know how to ask technical questions...)
• warp_factor 7y ago
  I wish people would be able to keep things simple and still use IRC instead of bullshit "productivity" apps like Slack
  • sebbean 7y ago
    does irc show link previews?
    • orev 7y ago
      IRC is a protocol, not an app. Many apps can connect to it. An app can show previews if it wants to.
      • qwsxyh 7y ago
        So, no.
        • setr 7y ago
          So, mu. The question was incorrect.
        • tobias2014 7y ago
          Quassel IRC (an IRC client) does, for example.
        • hbosch 7y ago
          Many IRC clients, in fact, do. So, yes, kind of.
      • warp_factor 7y ago
        Good point. What I meant is use an open protocol to which simple applications (or whatever you prefer to use) can be plugged. Because my company uses Slack I now have to use their stupid UI proprietary implementation. I'm also annoyed that popular open source projects like Kubernetes moved to Slack because it's "discriminatory" to use IRC apparently.
• oops 7y ago
  IRC was a pretty big part of my life. I remember when EFnet split to form IRCnet like it was yesterday. I’m probably still connected in a detached screen(1) session somewhere.
• jlrubin 7y ago
  I have at various points used IRC more or less actively. It's necessary for Bitcoin r&d more or less. I've also used Zephyr more often in the past (MIT has a lot of users), and found it's ability to handle topics in a channel (and diversions) easier to work with than IRCs single stream.
• microcolonel 7y ago
  IRC is great. I've been on Freenode since I was an obnoxious teen. There are upsides and downsides to not (generally) having server-side channel history; one big upshot is that nobody needs to maintain the infrastructure to store, curate, and archive 30 years of IRC logs for a whole network. XMPP is still a mess after all these years; there is no reason you should have to send so much XML just to send an IM or update your presence. I'm kinda waiting for SMTP to receive the slight adaptations it requires to be a decent IM protocol. As a long time SMTP operator, I think it's pretty darn close (especially looking at the way Gmail and Inbox [RIP] show threads), if SMTP daemons would cache trusted/known well behaved hosts, or batch/stream envelopes, that's prettymuch all that's missing on the server side.
• Keyframe 7y ago
  Slack+Twitter seem to have replace my IRC alternate life.
• souprock 7y ago
  I use it all the time at work. Along with Mattermost (yuck) it is a solution that works on a secured network. If your computer can reach something like Slack, your computer is exposed. At home I recently used it to chat with open source developers about a bug. They found the cause, then my son and I fixed it.
  • rvense 7y ago
    I'm very curious why you dislike Mattermost, my company has been considering moving over from Slack, but we've not spent a lot of time evaluating it - they seem very similar on the surface?
    • souprock 7y ago
      You might be happy with Mattermost. It's not IRC, and that is reason enough for me to grumble about it. Anything that help to break the addiction of putting trade secrets on internet-connected computers is an improvement over slack.
• mistrial9 7y ago
  Freenode traffic on certain channels has gone way, way down, like dead, no action, long-term lurk only. I suspect many 20-somethings (or younger) have never heard of Freenode, and why would they, it does not work on a smart-phone. Meanwhile, rich content services that do work on phones, seem to be very, very popular and growing constantly. Personally, I do not trust all communications to a corporate entity. It would be a better world if distributed FOSS systems, perhaps Freenode? get better somehow
  • sureaboutthis 7y ago
    If it's not game like then 20-somethings and younger--especially younger--won't bother. But these youngins are not what you want when you're trying to learn something. Especially professionally and the professionals are more likely to be on IRC without any green behind their ears.
  • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    All it takes is an IRC app.
    • ExBritNStuff 7y ago
      Phone IRC apps are the most annoying things in the world. Constant join and part messages as they disconnect and reconnect. That's one advantage of things like Slack; they handle persistence at the server level, rather than relying on the client. That being said, I'm a huge IRC fan and use it at work all day every day on two internally managed servers.
      • kaetemi 7y ago
        IRCCloud
        • giancarlostoro 7y ago
          I agree there. I dont worry about anything with irccloud. You might be able to achieve the same with a bouncer but then you still gotta invest in hosting one too.
• giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I use irccloud and I go on the DarkScience[0] IRCd. I even went as far as paying for the 1 year, I like just having it all in 1 client that never drops. I know I can setup a bouncer, but oh well. I prefer smaller communities. When I need programming or OS help I go on freenode where plenty of language communities are. Edit: Found out irccloud now supports connection bouncing, so you can use any irc client with them too[1]. [0]: https://www.darkscience.net/ https://www.darkscience.net/ [1]: https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/ https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/
  • johnmaguire2013 7y ago
    Another vote for DarkScience. I'm currently using weechat on my home NAS but considering IRCCloud, especially with that announcement.
• lacampbell 7y ago
  Yes, though I can't deny it's dying. If I had my way everyone would be on IRC, but if everyone is on discord, then I guess I'll follow them.
• beezlebubba 7y ago
  Every day. I'm in a channel with some former workmates who I haven't seen in person since 2007. IRC is how we keep in touch.
• macandcheese 7y ago
  If you think you don't like Slack, just wait until your company forces you to use Microsoft Teams ... Slack is really focused, performant, and an absolute joy to use in comparison.
  • teh_klev 7y ago
    > just wait until your company forces you to use Microsoft Teams Teams isn't that terrible. On my current gig, we use Teams (free for us because of some Action Pack or Office package - and that's fine because it's one less spend for us) and used to use Slack. I've used Slack and HipChat in previous employments as well. I'll be honest, I don't see much difference between any of them, they all have their UIX minor annoyances and good points. Ultimately with all these things it's all about good team etiquette and not interrupting your colleague workflow expecting responses within two minutes of pinging someone (we treat it like email, asynchronous, and for non-urgent communication). To be honest, I dislike the immediacy of these tools and usually mute every channel. If something's really that bloody urgent then just pick up the sodding phone :)
    • thrower123 7y ago
      The underpinnings are a step in the right direction, but the UX is a dumpster fire, which makes me pine for the usability of the lesser dumpster fire of Lync/Skype for Business. God forbid you ever need to be doing two IM conversations at a time, or attend a meeting and carry on a backchannel conversation concurrently. It's apparently too difficult to do a MDI interface in Electron.
      • teh_klev 7y ago
        To be honest there's just four of us all working remotely so I've not bumped into this. But I take your points onboard. I will admit I thought the screen sharing capability in Teams was fairly poor, but it's not something we do often and can resort to TeamViewer or something like that if need be. But I do realise that's not an option for folks working in a regimented and heavily controlled environment such as a bank. Also we're in our mid 40's to 50's so perhaps there's a generational discipline we have with these toys that the young guns may not have :) Don't get me wrong, I was a complete asshole on the college VAX messaging thing back in my teens :)
• dpedu 7y ago
  Every single day! Both to grouse about technology in channels dedicated to them and to speak socially with friends. I find it pretty confusing that I see posts like "is IRC dead?" or "does anyone still use IRC?" as often as I do. I find IRC is a very active and I'm constantly discovering new corners of it. I'm on about 15 networks and know there are many, many more I haven't explored.
• readingnews 7y ago
  Not only do I use it quite often (wow, the developers you can talk to who hang out on linux forums), but I know a number of companies where the entire tech team just hangs out in the company channel, getting things done. Faster than email, the terminal is always open, live chat...
• ionwake 7y ago
  I use IRSSI in my shell whenever I have a tech question
• megous 7y ago
  I control my bots via private IRC server.
• caf 7y ago
  Yeah, still using IRC (mostly Efnet but I keep a weather eye on Freenode for a project I maintain). I think I just feel at home there.
• pteraspidomorph 7y ago
  Freenode on occasion. I used it regularly for more than 20 years but nowadays casual chichat moved to Discord. I'm keeping an eye on Matrix.
• hprotagonist 7y ago
  i have a linode box that runs irssi in a tmux session 24/7 and that’s all it’s for. i have learned more about python emacs sql and gentoo on irc than anywhere else.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  I did to get some Haskell help about 4 years ago, and it was very good for that. But that's mainly down to other humans, not something special about IRC itself.
• Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  Yep, I use IRC all day, every day. I keep in touch with many of my friends on IRC, hang out in social and technical channels, organize developers on my projects, provide support channels on IRC, ask questions and reach out to projects I'm collaborating with... I'm in hundreds of channels on a dozen networks. I run a dozen IRC bots. IRC is still king. Nothing beats plaintext communication on a well-established protocol with hundreds of implementations. Least of all a proprietary walled garden like Slack, Discord, etc
• spudlyo 7y ago
  Every day. I have a long running tmux session running irssi on a community Linux host that's been humming along in some forgotten corner of a vast data center for the past 11.71 years[0]. My ~/.irssi/config has me on a number of channels on a handful of different servers. Some on networks like chat.freenode.net and irc.mibbit.net, and some on single servers hosted by different groups of friends. Freenode has been really helpful for me. I've had great conversations on ##aws, #lfs, #tmux, and #hammerspoon in recent weeks. [0]: root@eidolon:~# smartctl --all /dev/sda | grep Power_On_Hours | cut -c88- 102567
  • lawfulcactus 7y ago
    ##security and ##ibmthinkpad are my personal favorites. They don't take themselves too seriously (as in, you're allowed to get off-topic), but can be super helpful when needed. The wealth of knowledge combined with the general lightheartedness is refreshing.
  • INTPenis 7y ago
    Waait a minute. I know we used to love sharing uptime on IRC back in the 90s but these days it's just irresponsible to leave a server running for 11 years without reboots. Because when has it ever been patched? You know vulnerabilities in IRC clients do exist. That's why we were always told to not irc with root back in the days of BitchX.
    • jdsnape 7y ago
      I think that command is showing you the total number of hours the system has been running, not the uptime - so it could have been rebooted for patching [Edit] - Slightly pedantically, it's the number of hours one of the disks has been powered up
      • INTPenis 7y ago
        Yes I suspected as much. So really this is bragging about continuous power for 11 years. Which is impressive. I never saw anyone measure uptime in that way before. But it make a lot more sense than measuring the OS uptime.
• jamestomasino 7y ago
  Yes, on freenode, irc.tildeverse.org, irc.sdf.org, and several others. I find peer groups and support on my tools, languages, and hobbies. IRC is the best. It's not going anywhere.
• nsx147 7y ago
  I miss IRC too. Unfortunately I cannot find a good mac IRC client and that seriously has inhibited my desire to use it. I used to use gamesurge and enterthegame servers mainly to hang and chat with other gaming buddies. So much has changed since then
  • manjana 7y ago
    Check out: https://weechat.org/ https://weechat.org/. It's my favorite. Runs in a shell so you can use it on most operating systems.
  • skyfaller 7y ago
    I like LimeChat http://limechat.net/mac/ http://limechat.net/mac/ for an open source app, it's been somewhat dormant but it got an update semi-recently. Textual https://www.codeux.com/textual/ https://www.codeux.com/textual/ is a proprietary paid app that seems to be under more active development. I used it for a bit and enjoyed it, but prefer FOSS when possible and switched back to LimeChat when it got updated again.
    • andrewjanke 7y ago
      LimeChat is great. I use their mobile version, and it is about the fastest iOS app I've ever used. I'm still Textual on the desktop, though.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  Yes, every work day. I work remote for a great Open Source company. We've got people all around the globe, IRC is the glue that holds everything together. Some pockets of the company are trying Slack, etc. but IRC is still the backbone.
• mself 7y ago
  Yes, it’s called Skack now.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• jchw 7y ago
  I use IRCCloud, and sit mostly on a few Freenode channels. It’s still pretty common for open source developers to congregate on IRC. I used to run a personal ZNC instance when I still used IRC to socialize, but Discord killed it all, and honestly as stuff got “too big” I even left a lot of the Discord servers as well to escape the nasty annoying drama. Now IRC Cloud makes more sense because it gives me push notifications; I don’t actively sit on IRC much now.
• jtl999 7y ago
  I love IRC. Only really been on Freenode and a few other smaller networks (since the glory days of EFNet et al were before my time) but since 2008 I've met countless friends, some of which I know in person and I love working on open source projects with small but dedicated communities, which often use IRC. Now if you excuse me I need to go move my bouncer to another box :)
• thinkxl 7y ago
  Yes. I mostly hang out in ##frontend, #indieweb, and #whatwg. The people I met in ##frontend were extremely helpful and made them good friends.
• salutonmundo 7y ago
  Yes. (With Hexchat, if you're interested.) There are various tech support channels on freenode (like #debian) and other networks like moznet. I also enjoy a smallish but active discussion channel which I won't name here for fear of it being HN'd.
• skwidge 7y ago
  I do on occasion but just for social purposes, not for work. I'm still confused/impressed at how slack took a free service, stuck something similar but not quite as good in a browser, sold subscriptions and got rich doing it.
  • sundbry 7y ago
    Emojis.
    • rvense 7y ago
      giphy.
• Endy 7y ago
  Yes. I use IRC to chat, to roleplay, to interact with people and the like. Basically, I both can't and won't use Discord (too much Google reliance - the client program is in unheaded Chrome). So I use IRC.
• akulbe 7y ago
  Every day, for nearly 20 years. I won't stop until it's gone. Social networks come and go... IRC has outlasted all of 'em.
• swiftcoder 7y ago
  IRC is still the backup communication network at large tech firms - I can personally attest to its use at Amazon and Facebook. Typically there are other, more advanced chat platforms in use for day-to-day (Amazon Chime and WorkChat, respectively), but when shit hits the fan those have deep dependency chains, whereas IRC basically just needs a single box with a network connection...
  • mattlondon 7y ago
    Google SRE too according to https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-incidents/ https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-in... And as everyone knows Google have a lot of chat products!
• smilesnd 7y ago
  Yep been using IRC for over 10 years now and still love it. Always seem like any gui base chat client required more resources then they should. Also the clients didn't allow for modifications I would want/need. Also at the time getting into desktop chat clients one of the popular ones to make profit turn their client into a massive botnet selling cpu power to business. This lead me to distrust gui clients early on. I recently had a handful of friends that wanted to get away from IRC mainly because smart phone interaction is not the best. Since we switched to keybase I feel like we talk less. Also the desktop client doesn't close without using kill command which makes me open it less. I use IRC just for chatting with friends and strangers on internet. Shout out to the #csharp channel on freenode some great people that regularly answer questions and help people out.
• carc1n0gen 7y ago
  Every single day. I hang out on #pocoo on freenode. It's the channel for the Flask python framework and related libraries I lurk and help out the people new to flask. There's new people all the time
• stdcall83 7y ago
  I'm using it extensively for open source development. Mostly Linux kernel and Uboot. I have a "the lounge" server running on digital ocean droplet so I can connect easily. Giving free users accounts to my server if anyone is interested. Drop me a line.
• austhrow743 7y ago
  The torrenting community is on it. I was getting some help setting up software on a seedbox there yesterday in fact.
• jaequery 7y ago
  IRC needs to evolve to meet the standards of now. Which means, make it more easily accessible, like easy as opening a website. And two, I feel there should just be a single network. Either that or make it easy to explore other networks. The kids these days are not going to bother understanding or picking and choosing which network to go. It's got to be super simple.
  • contradictioned 7y ago
    I think, there's a web client for every major IRC network. Just enter a nickname and start chatting.
• dredmorbius 7y ago
  The Archive Team of independent website archivists use IRC, on Efnet, to communicate, coordinate, and plan. I got to witness and particiate in the "googleminus" project which succeeded in capturing 98% of public Google+ content before that site went down. The ability to collaborate, combine and share information, and respond to contingencies on the fly was impressive.
• mikorym 7y ago
  Short answer: Yes. Long answer: My colleagues don't want to so I use it mostly for forums. Some programming languages have chat channels and I have heard that for open source dev it is still somewhat common but I suspect it is declining. It's a pity because I think Slack is stupid. Slack does not have the transparency of IRC and frankly the fact that you can share files and use fonts and indents are not selling points for me. EDIT: Slack is stupid for me. To each their own I guess? EDIT2: Just to make it clear, judging from other answers a lot of programmers use IRC every day. But not all of my colleagues are programmers. Some fall in the chasm between "data science" and programming and for such people IRC is unfortunately unfamiliar.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • mavhc 7y ago
    Slack holds your old messages hostage until you pay their ransom. Reason enough not to use it
    • Faaak 7y ago
      IRC per se doesn't hold any message when you weren't logged in. Reason enough not to use it.
      • pgeorgi 7y ago
        Holding messages is a client side task in IRC. Which works because IRC is a protocol, not a product.
      • ivanhoe 7y ago
        We used bots to do that, but in todays world it's so easy to just stay logged in all the time, just leave a screen or tmux session running as a background process on a server
        • mikorym 7y ago
• mitsakos 7y ago
  Every single day. Logged in > 30 channels and talking to >20 people every day. It's a prereq for work anyway (more than half the company is actually on IRC). I also vastly prefer it to other solutions (yes, I tried slack, matrix, mattermost, discord, skype, google chat/hangouts/meet/whatevergooglecallsitthesedays - they all in some way)
• sbov 7y ago
  Some use IRC, some use discord. A friend wrote a bot so people in our IRC chat can communicate with people in our discord chat (and vice versa).
• stakhanov 7y ago
  I barely use it, so maybe people can correct me on this one if I've got it wrong, but: It seems to me like it's now used almost exclusively for communication around underworld/illegal stuff. I would definitely be quite scared to hang around IRC not being anonymous (not talking about freenode here, of course, which is where open source developer folk hang out).
• chaz6 7y ago
  Yes! It has been around a very long time and is robust and well understood, and is not proprietary, and is decentralised. I hope it stays around for the next few decades.
• nikanj 7y ago
  Yes. In a weird way, it acts like a third place ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place ) online. If I join #mountaincycles, there's bound to be people there who are somewhat interested in mountain cycles. The discussion usually is in no way moderated or limited to be just about cycles, though.
• Kliment 7y ago
  Daily, it's my primary online social communication tool. Nothing else compares.
• jokoon 7y ago
  When I have questions that I don't really expect Google to have answers for, I use IRC. Mostly about second opinions, in depth technical stuff, or when I don't have time to create a question on stack overflow because Google can't always find the lexical context between my Google search and the actual solution. Chat is also much better than forums when you want to interact. Slack and discord are bloated software, which are centralized. IRC is much more lightweight and simple, and most of the time logs are available. It's more open.
• rurban 7y ago
  Stopped 4 years ago. I only come back for the yearly CCC conference channels.
• Improvotter 7y ago
  I search questions on Google/Stackoverflow, I post questions on IRC because I do not want to put all of it out there and get berated by the SO community. Though I still know that most IRC channels have public logs.
• kishansagathiya 7y ago
  IPFS and it's sister projects use it.
• erik_p 7y ago
  /me nope ;)
• theshrike79 7y ago
  Been using IRC pretty much daily for over 25 years, and I'm not stopping. That's where my friends are, most of whom are old-ish farts like me. Also I like the barrier to entry IRC has, it keeps the worst of the worst out because you need some technical skill to even get in. That's why most programming language / distro channels on IRC are of better quality than random slacks or discord servers.
  • Lorkki 7y ago
    Technically, the barrier to entry is as low these days as any other messaging service: you can sign up on IRCCloud and instantly have a friendly browser-based experience without worrying about setting up a persistent client, logging etc. by yourself, and mobile and desktop clients are available. These days the network effects just favour old farts and engineers.
• jacobush 7y ago
  I use it with a bunch of friends in a private channel since 20 years back.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  Everyday. It's a fix point of internet chatting. It has just enough, people on it are either ~ok or great, it requires barely nothing. I may have ran slack once but didn't stay. I used discord to talk to collapse minded groups, and although discord seems a great piece of work (audio chat is neatly done), both the resources required and the structure/format made chatting way less flowing compared to IRC.
• tomerbd 7y ago
  slack
• xDest 7y ago
  Just to note this here as it seems this hasn't been mentioned yet, the Twitch chat is based on IRC. They run their own servers and you have to log in with your Twitch credentials but you can user your usual IRC client to connect to the Twitch IRC. In addition, special Twitch IRC clients have spawned, like TC [1] or Chatty [2] that include support for Twitch-specifics like Emotes, notifications and direct linking to the associated video streams. [1] https://gettc.xyz/ https://gettc.xyz/ [2] http://chatty.github.io/ http://chatty.github.io/
  • gempir 7y ago
    It's amazing what people have been able to build because Twitch chose the open IRC standard. Anyone interested in C++ and Twitch should checkout a project of good friends of mine https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2 https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2 A crossplatform chat client for Twitch in QT so no electron BS. Personally I have also really enjoyed developing chat bots for fun tasks or logging. So IRC is definetely a big part why I love programming so much.
• dijit 7y ago
  I still run an IRC network with over 400 users. Not sure what I'd do without them, it feels like a "real" social network, where we are different people chatting in real time over several days, the simplicity of the protocol forces people to be clear in their words and not use excessive emoji (although, yes, IRC does support emoji) If anything the decline of other groups running their own IRC has been good for mine, as their groups decide to continue living by becoming a channel on my network- then their members bleed into all of our social groups in addition to their own, obviously it won't last. But for now it feels very natural and organic. If you want to join we're on irc.darkscience.net/+6697 (SSL) #darkscience however, I used to use IRC at work, that seems to have been taken over by slack in most companies though.
• alpb 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I work at Google. IRC is still actively used as a main communication channel internally at Google to coordinate during outages due to its reliable and low-dependency nature (where a Slack equivalent app relies on hundreds of service dependencies). I know for a fact that Google is not the only company, and many others that practice SRE-like roles do the same.
• floatingatoll 7y ago
  I used IRC from 1992 to 2019, and was gradually pushed away from IRC by years of harassment from anonymous/registered accounts. It turns out that IRC's anonymity is incompatible with harassment swarming behaviors. I'm sad to see it fail as a social platform, but I won't miss it.
  • Doxin 7y ago
    Any vaguely modern IRC server runs nameserv and allows you to block unregistered nicks from channels. It's not by any means a solved problem but it's a good stopgap against spam floods and the like.
    • floatingatoll 7y ago
      Yes, that was available, and didn’t help. But I appreciate the thought.
  • dustfinger 7y ago
    That is disappointing to hear. I have only been using IRC regularly since 2005. I have never been harassed, but I only spend time on tech channels such as #emacs, #python, #gentoo etc.
• bhaak 7y ago
  The NetHack community is pretty much centered around IRC. After the demise of Usenet, much of the discussions shifted to the Freenode IRC networks with https://nethackwiki.com/ https://nethackwiki.com/ being the place for dumping less fleeting information. There are various channels for NetHack variants and for the different public servers that offer online play. Most discussions happen on the public server du jour channel, currently this would be #nethack-hardfought. Lately, there has opened up a connection to the roguelikes Discord server (https://discord.gg/vg9WWf2 https://discord.gg/vg9WWf2) with two-way bridges from Discord to IRC and back.
• Angostura 7y ago
  Yes, I use it quite a bit. There are a couple of good Mac-focused channels on Freenode. I think I originally went there for the Hackernews #startups channel where there were interesting peopple talking about interesting things.
• valeg 7y ago
  Yes, I use IRC through a Matrix bridge in the Riot client. It just works, provides persistence.
• wink 7y ago
  Yes, daily. Access to a network of friends and people I can ask for advice and provide advice in return. Several channels for open source projects. Sadly not for work anymore.
• emilfihlman 7y ago
  Of course. I use it every day for keeping in touch with technically minded communities and some talking channels. Irssi is my wagon, it runs on my server in a screen and I use ssh to access it, both on desktop and mobile.
• derpherpsson 7y ago
  I use it. It's neat for finding those wonderful little crazy communities that are hiding out in the anonymizing crypto nets (Tor, I2P, LokiNet, ..) It's the only place left where there are ONLY real terminal junkies and nerds. No normies. I can relax.
• fsloth 7y ago
  Yes. I use it to talk to friends. We've been at it for decades and see no reason to stop. Old habits.
• iuguy 7y ago
  Of course. I use IRC for a bunch of different reasons. I have some bots, I occasionally frequent a few channels related to specific topics and it's a place where the snr can be quite high at times thanks to the fact that most of the noise is on other networks.
• point78 7y ago
  Every single day.... it's unbeatable imo
• dustfinger 7y ago
  I just discovered ##hackernews on freenode :-P Also, #startups is the official hackernews chan.
• Dowwie 7y ago
  Python, Rust, and Postgresql have all had really great IRC communities. Unfortunately, stakeholders in Rust decided to move to discord and decommission the Mozilla server, but there remains a determined smaller community on Freenode, ##rust. IRC remains one of the best ways to connect with technologists and talk shop.
  • steveklabnik 7y ago
    To be clear, the Rust teams decided (mostly) to move to Discord and Zulip; Mozilla decided to disband its IRC. These decisions were made by disjoint sets of people.
• dexen 7y ago
  Yes of course. Both for technical and for social activities. Side note, there's a very nice IRC log service ran by Whitequark [1] - yes, the one of Glasgow fame. The source is available[2], so you can set up your own too. [1] https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/ https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/ [2] https://github.com/whitequark/irclogger https://github.com/whitequark/irclogger
• EnderMB 7y ago
  I like IRC, and I'd like to use it more, but it all depends on the community. Back when I was getting to grips with .NET, the #csharp channel was invaluable in getting immediate technical help. They were the ones that introduced me to LINQ, Hangfire, and reverse proxying with nginx. Despite also being an avid Stack Overflow user at the time, #csharp was a far more approachable place, and I'll always be thankful for their support. Nearly two years ago I picked up Ruby, but sadly the IRC communities around Ruby and Rails seem pretty dead, especially compared to Slack. I'm sure it's mostly lurkers, but I've always preferred to see lively IRC channels, where you could jump in at any point and see technical discussion or just shooting the breeze. Sometimes, I'd just go to a channel to chat about my day, or about the tech scene where I am compared to where others live.
• heldrida 7y ago
  Yes, Freenode! IRC is way better because it's minimal, fast, immediate feedback and people seem to be more interested in exchanging ideas, help, etc - the community seems to be way more skilled than the new generation of coders who use those web-based chat services. There are no photos, etc. You need to think before posting a question, needs to be clear. If you visit one of these web chat thingies, you'll notice that people take ages to reply if they do end up replying back to you; In IRC it's live!
• 0898 7y ago
  A couple of years ago I logged into a channel on Dalnet I used to frequent when I was 16 in 1998. Some of the SAME people were there. Nearly 20 years later.
• mixedmath 7y ago
  Yeah, I love IRC. I'm only on freenode now with any frequency, though. Maybe I'm missing out on some other great servers? I'm unsure.
• fitnesshealth 7y ago
  Thanks For Share this i love to use this
• oaf357 7y ago
  Red Hat does.
• m23khan 7y ago
  AWS IRC chat channel can be a God-send when you are stuck and need direction pronto. The only caviat maybe that its best to hit the AWS IRC chat channel during North American (especially EST) work hours.
• andrewjanke 7y ago
  One more "yes, daily" here. I'm on Freenode for tech topics: #octave, ##matlab, #zsh, #bash, #machomebrew, and #macports are active and useful. And I have a group of friends who are on a private IRC server and have been for years. We recently considered switching to a "modern" chat platform. Tried Slack, Matrix, Mattermost, Zulip, and a couple others. Decided we still liked the "feel" of IRC best. (I hate all the whitespace and decoration that modern PWAs use.) Bouncers or IRCCloud solve the offline-delivery problem, and I can live without the other features that newer chat systems provide.
• anarcat 7y ago
  I do. For everything: Twitter, Mastodon, Jabber, and of course IRC, everything goes over IRC. And while I am sorry to see people reinventing the wheel with all those crazy web-based protocols, I can't help but think it's kind of nice with less people around. :p
• DarmokJalad1701 7y ago
  Yup. It's still the best place to find ebooks when sailing the high seas.
• ThomPete 7y ago
  yes there is actually a #startups on freenode.
• TheSeeker11 7y ago
  I do indeed. I use Monochrome as my client - written by the author of foobar2000 https://perkele.cc/software/monochrome https://perkele.cc/software/monochrome
• NorthCon_de 7y ago
  We use IRC as a central way of communication for our LAN parties, starting in 1998 and spanning at least eight directly connected party series/"brands" over all those years. The number of attendees ranges from about 100 up to 3,500+ (German record, 2005, still holds), including roughly two dozen parties with 1,000 to 2,500 attendees. On the orga side, we use it daily for internal discussion and notifications. Events from our own LAN party platform's [1] party web sites (accounts, orders, forum posts, etc.), internal forums, GitLab (issues, CI build results), and social media (followers, mentions) are announced there – using a combination of web hooks, RSS, Zapier, and custom tools ([2], [3]). These days we use IRC in tandem with a self-hosted Mattermost [4] instance, a bot to bridge between both, and the option to connect to Mattermost with an IRC client. A few things like embedded images get lost on the way, though. On the parties itself, we run a local IRC server. There is a main party channel with auto-join. Organizers are on IRC both for internal collaboration and monitoring (e.g. [5]) as well as user support. Tournament players are required to be present in the respective IRC channels for the tournaments they participate in. Events from the local party intranet [1] (news posts, forum posts, tournament updates) are announced on IRC as well. A modified version of The Lounge [6] is provided as a simple, web-based alternative as part of our intranet for everyone not used to, or too fond of, a "classic" IRC client. Last but not least, there's #quiz, running the same MoxQuizz [7] version for ages with questions from the mid-2000s. That said, our guests usually provide multiple locally public TeamSpeak servers for voice communication. So while we added some more modern tools and services to the mix (for example a Telegram channel for announcements, reminders and other tiny bits of information), and are considering others (for example Discord, but dependence on Internet connectivity and third-party terms are a massive downside for us), both IRC and LAN parties are totally not dead for us. [1] https://github.com/byceps/byceps https://github.com/byceps/byceps [2] https://github.com/homeworkprod/weitersager https://github.com/homeworkprod/weitersager [3] https://github.com/homeworkprod/gewebehaken https://github.com/homeworkprod/gewebehaken [4] https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/ [5] https://github.com/homeworkprod/syslog2irc https://github.com/homeworkprod/syslog2irc [6] https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/ [7] http://moxquizz.de/ http://moxquizz.de/