Let me tackle this from a different angle: How long did it take you bring your client into a reliably working state? And have you tried to do the same with a

Let me tackle this from a different angle: How long did it take you bring your client into a reliably working state? And have you tried to do the same with a XMPP client for comparison? As said, I didn't mean to claim IRC is perfect - nothing is. But if you think the differences that IRC networks have introduced are problematic then I invite you to try and build a most basic jabber client.