"Complete trash"? Please. I realize I'm feeling (objectively?) "defensive" as an everyday professional IRC user for the last 10-ish years. That said, having

"Complete trash"? Please. I realize I'm feeling (objectively?) "defensive" as an everyday professional IRC user for the last 10-ish years. That said, having tried many of the recent obese chat tools (which do have some nice properties), I still maintain the stance that IRC's clutter-free nature brings a certain tranquility and clarity. Sure, IRC absolutely has its problems. However, as noted elsewhere[1], despite its flaws, IRC's strengths still shine with great luminence, when it comes to plain text-based communication. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119407 - - - <digression> It reminds of something I recently read in an essay called Coon Tree (written in 1956) by the inimitable E.B. White: "Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small, and the world is remodeled by Man the Architect functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he changed everything to suit his vogues and his conniptions." I didn't quote the surrounding context (which itself is quite enjoyable) for brevity. But do read the full essay if you can. </digression>