3 ms·
IRC exists in the space outside the circles.
by theandrewbailey 6y ago
IRC exists in the space outside the circles.
- genewitch 6y agoI've built deliverables using IRC as the backend: it's distributable, you can make immutable logs for specific channels (in the IRC sense and the logging sense), it has access control baked in, it allows TLS (and can force TLS), and it's nominally "eventually consistent", etc. Famously, Blizzard used IRC for the chat in Diablo II, and more recently, Twitch uses IRC as the backend for their chat services (or did. can't imagine why they'd change it now). I reckon if you ignore everything released since the middle of 1996, you could probably build nearly every service that's worthwhile using just the RFCs up to and including may of 1996. My actual theory is you only need to 1993 at most, but since lots of folks here use http (in theory) it's probably better to throw a bone.
- exikyut 6y agoIRC is also really easy to debug/visualize and reason about, that's generally my favorite property of the protocol. The only infuriating thing about IRC is the ~512 char line length. Most of my attempts to base things on IRC have crashed on this limitation while in the design phase :( (Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991049)