I kind of miss IRC, but it was probably for a different ‘me’. I ran my own network, with lots of people on it, when I was like…13! Nobody should’ve let me do th

I kind of miss IRC, but it was probably for a different ‘me’. I ran my own network, with lots of people on it, when I was like…13! Nobody should’ve let me do that. But it was what had me cut my teeth on FreeBSD and Linux. I wrote my own weird UnrealIRCd configuration generator with Perl. IRC bots! Again, with Perl. For all IRC’s downsides vs modern IM services, it sure was easy to start with socket programming and get a bot together quickly. “Scrolling” ASCII images! mIRC colour codes! PP4L! I remember getting help with installing Gentoo on Freenode #gentoo (or was it ##gentoo?), also as a 14 year old. I’d at times love to say that all that knowledge has exited me, but for better or worse some of it remains.