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To hopefully short-circuit a lot of pointless endlessly rehashed debate: Things IRC is better at: – being light weight (both server and clients) – being an o

To hopefully short-circuit a lot of pointless endlessly rehashed debate: Things IRC is better at: – being light weight (both server and clients) – being an open standard – horizontal scaling – simplicity (talk to it over telnet if you want) Things every other modern messaging solution is better at: – name and channel management – permissions that are more granular than ability to access a channel or not – non-textual content (images/video/emoji) – rich text (HTML/markdown/syntax highlighting/typefaces/fonts) – one to one/many to many calls and meetings in a world with everyone behind a NAT and middleboxes – file transfers – screen sharing – mobile connectivity – threading – message history/ability to receive messages while not online – aesthetics and UX (most IRC clients resemble TUI apps) – accurate presence (whether a given person is actually available or not, attempts to paper over missing IRC features with things like bouncers usually break this and the offered features are usually more granular than connected or not connected) – extensibility (/commands and "chatops") – abuse control and prevention Things that do not matter to the world at large: – That you personally are not a fan of the modern solutions and/or find them distracting – That modern messaging solutions are centralized rather than distributed – That a new IRC standard is on the way that addresses most of IRC's deficiencies… Two decades too late. – Privacy policies and TOSes that allow platform owners to target ads at users or "sell their data" – That a variety of clients for each service is not available – The availability of and license to the source code for the client and server Reasons why (insert name of decentralized project) is unlikely to displace the centralized incumbents anytime soon: – Their UX is worse or they are lacking a significant number of features – Users don't want to run servers or deal with technical minutia, and the alternative requires these – The problems this project solves are mostly on the list of things that do not matter to the world at large

thakoppno 4y ago
great breakdown any conclusions you can think to highlight given all that. for instance when would you choose one or the other?
- Karunamon 4y ago
  The only time I would personally choose IRC is if my use case targeted retro systems with limited CPU/ram/network connectivity, or I am integrating with something that uses IRC for some reason (like the back end for Twitch chat). If I actually cared about decentralization above other concerns, my next choice would be Matrix. For literally all other use cases, I would be on Discord or Slack. Users are likely already familiar with it, likely already use one or both, and I'll have to answer a lot fewer technical questions.
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
The debate is just team sports at this point. The camp that likes IRC likes IRC. The camp that doesn't like IRC doesn't like IRC. In 2022 I doubt there's going to be someone who re/discovers IRC as the next big thing. It always gets upvotes here because there's overlap between the vocal i-detest-social-media crowd and the IRC crowd. I'd also add that IRC is very easy to write a client for, especially if you're in a language without too many niceties, like an HTTP client library. As long as you can open a TCP socket and read/write from it, you can make an IRC client.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Indeed. My comment reached -4 quite rapidly, without a single rebuttal given. I say all of these things as someone that generally likes IRC. I have lots of good memories of it. But I also like plenty of other retro things, and the list of things that IRC does worse than everything else is long, objectively definable, and worst of all: ever-growing. Generally speaking, choosing IRC as your messaging tool is doing a disservice to both yourself and your users. There are better tools for nearly every use case.
  - welterde 4y ago
    The initial version of your comment essentially stated that rebuttals are not welcome (still kinda does, since the stated goal is to avoid rehashing old discussions). But just to give you some kind of rebuttal (or mention some unmentioned points by you): IRC has native clients for many more operating systems than any alternatives (many don't even have any native clients at all!). IRC will still work when everything is very broken (DNS on fire, AWS having a moment, ..) and I think a fair few still use it for that reliability aspect. UX is very much in the eye of the beholder. Chatops is very much a thing in IRC as well as adding commands to it (just with ! instead of /).
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      Yes, which is why I reworded it. The score continued to decline. Honestly, everything I've posted here is a list of facts. I'm more than willing to entertain being wrong on one or more of them, but as far as I can tell those facts are not actually in question. Regarding your edit, that could be seen as a benefit that IRC has, but right there with that would have to be "native clients" on the list of things that most people don't care about. The hatred of non-native packaged web apps is mostly a techie thing that doesn't exist outside of forums like HN. In a world where electron didn't exist, there would be a world with less platform support, not a world with more native apps.
motohagiography 4y ago
Great summary. The one thing I would add in favour of IRC was its main use case, which was pseudonym to pseudonym communication. It is similar to HN's light pseudonym identity that allows for just enough candidness (canditity? candidosity?) without having to support features for complete fugitives. For Matrix channels to succeed, they need a culture around them, and the semi-criminal world of hacking back in the day is what led to its growth, imo. I remember one day someone very smart said, "stop using silc," where the implication was it was compromised in a very intentional way, and a lot of people dropped it and went back to irc. It's hard to think of a subculture now that would facilitate that. IRC was the effect of the internet being novel. If you have a subculture, the effort to prevent it from being brigaded is going to come at a cost of organic growth. To get Matrix off the ground, you would need new tech with a lot of upside in front of it, like blockchains, maybe CRISPR, drone racing, analog/quantum computing, day trading, maybe a new musical form, something with a physical competence as a bar. I don't think the gap is in the tech, it's in the lack of diversity in what people physically do anymore.
- jks 4y ago
  > candidness (canditity? candidosity?) Candor?
  - motohagiography 4y ago
    Thank you, you can see how I blanked on it. :) If I could characterize the post-social-media internet, it would be by its lack of candor.
Shish2k 4y ago
Thank you for this, I wish every oft-repeated discussion on HN had such a great summary :)

thakoppno 4y ago

great breakdown any conclusions you can think to highlight given all that. for instance when would you choose one or the other?

Karunamon 4y ago
The only time I would personally choose IRC is if my use case targeted retro systems with limited CPU/ram/network connectivity, or I am integrating with something that uses IRC for some reason (like the back end for Twitch chat). If I actually cared about decentralization above other concerns, my next choice would be Matrix. For literally all other use cases, I would be on Discord or Slack. Users are likely already familiar with it, likely already use one or both, and I'll have to answer a lot fewer technical questions.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

The debate is just team sports at this point. The camp that likes IRC likes IRC. The camp that doesn't like IRC doesn't like IRC. In 2022 I doubt there's going to be someone who re/discovers IRC as the next big thing. It always gets upvotes here because there's overlap between the vocal i-detest-social-media crowd and the IRC crowd. I'd also add that IRC is very easy to write a client for, especially if you're in a language without too many niceties, like an HTTP client library. As long as you can open a TCP socket and read/write from it, you can make an IRC client.

Karunamon 4y ago
Indeed. My comment reached -4 quite rapidly, without a single rebuttal given. I say all of these things as someone that generally likes IRC. I have lots of good memories of it. But I also like plenty of other retro things, and the list of things that IRC does worse than everything else is long, objectively definable, and worst of all: ever-growing. Generally speaking, choosing IRC as your messaging tool is doing a disservice to both yourself and your users. There are better tools for nearly every use case.
- welterde 4y ago
  The initial version of your comment essentially stated that rebuttals are not welcome (still kinda does, since the stated goal is to avoid rehashing old discussions). But just to give you some kind of rebuttal (or mention some unmentioned points by you): IRC has native clients for many more operating systems than any alternatives (many don't even have any native clients at all!). IRC will still work when everything is very broken (DNS on fire, AWS having a moment, ..) and I think a fair few still use it for that reliability aspect. UX is very much in the eye of the beholder. Chatops is very much a thing in IRC as well as adding commands to it (just with ! instead of /).
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    Yes, which is why I reworded it. The score continued to decline. Honestly, everything I've posted here is a list of facts. I'm more than willing to entertain being wrong on one or more of them, but as far as I can tell those facts are not actually in question. Regarding your edit, that could be seen as a benefit that IRC has, but right there with that would have to be "native clients" on the list of things that most people don't care about. The hatred of non-native packaged web apps is mostly a techie thing that doesn't exist outside of forums like HN. In a world where electron didn't exist, there would be a world with less platform support, not a world with more native apps.

motohagiography 4y ago

Great summary. The one thing I would add in favour of IRC was its main use case, which was pseudonym to pseudonym communication. It is similar to HN's light pseudonym identity that allows for just enough candidness (canditity? candidosity?) without having to support features for complete fugitives. For Matrix channels to succeed, they need a culture around them, and the semi-criminal world of hacking back in the day is what led to its growth, imo. I remember one day someone very smart said, "stop using silc," where the implication was it was compromised in a very intentional way, and a lot of people dropped it and went back to irc. It's hard to think of a subculture now that would facilitate that. IRC was the effect of the internet being novel. If you have a subculture, the effort to prevent it from being brigaded is going to come at a cost of organic growth. To get Matrix off the ground, you would need new tech with a lot of upside in front of it, like blockchains, maybe CRISPR, drone racing, analog/quantum computing, day trading, maybe a new musical form, something with a physical competence as a bar. I don't think the gap is in the tech, it's in the lack of diversity in what people physically do anymore.

jks 4y ago
> candidness (canditity? candidosity?) Candor?
- motohagiography 4y ago
  Thank you, you can see how I blanked on it. :) If I could characterize the post-social-media internet, it would be by its lack of candor.

Shish2k 4y ago

Thank you for this, I wish every oft-repeated discussion on HN had such a great summary :)