8 ms·
Ask HN: Best IRC channels?
What are the best IRC channels for developers, security, networks, programming, general tech discussion, data science, etc. Just looking for some recco's.
- chris11 13y ago#postgresql and #qgis on freenode can both be really helpful when you are running into problems.
- progamler 13y agoNetworks, #networker in ircnet and #ix in /irc.terahertz.net
- soapdog 13y agoirc.mozilla.org has a lot of cool channels
- kavarna 13y agoirc://#kavarna@irc.drsnejsever.org
- level09 13y agoUsually I join topic-specific channels, got tons of answers in #django , #javascript, #drupal, #flask, #python, #celery, #nodejs etc .. Those are on freenode, there are channels for software users (e.g: photoshop) but on a different servers.
- girvo 13y agoI hang out on Freenode, in #nimrod, ##php, #elementary-dev and a couple of others. I'd love to know some good security ones to idle in; I've got a bit of experience in it and am trying to expand it some more, and would love a place to ask questions regarding web security and the like.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago##security (Freenode) is the channel to go.
- dajohnson89 13y agoTry ##crypto
- Kudos 13y ago#startups on Freenode was mentioned here before, I think.
- perryh2 13y agoThe last time I checked, that channel has almost nothing to do with startups.
- Kliment 13y agoNope, but it's entirely full of HN readers.
- davidw 13y agoIt comes and goes. It's way less serious and more off topic and casual than HN, but there are quite a few of us there. Other than that one, I sometimes visit tech specific channels like #erlang or #chicagoboss or whatever I'm using... #postgresql is pretty good, #rubyonrails is a bit crowded these days.
- Joeboy 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017102
- miguelrochefort 13y ago#startups is a very unfriendly place with power-tripping mods. Don't go there.
- Kudos 13y agoThere are very few people with ops in there and one of them is well known on HN (http://swombat.com/ http://swombat.com/). Now that I think of it I've never seen any other op speak.
- unpointfulness 13y agoPersonally, I never found IRC to be a helpful tool for learning new things from unfamiliar people. To me, IRC has always been a "grapevine" tool, where etiquette, social pecking orders and gossip are shared amongst a smallish close-knit social circle. IRC always feels more like a social scene, and a distraction. If anything, perhaps an IRC channel is useful for managing fluid, rapidly changing situations, where you might need an up-to-date, live information source, to use in immediate decision making (hence, why bot net command and control tends to be integrated into IRC programs), but, otherwise, chat logs from IRC usually read like a disorganized array of participant's various scattered streams of consciousness. Are you looking for reading material, or a hangout?
- mfjordvald 13y agoOn the flip side hanging out in #nginx taught me so much. I started helping out other people. Started a blog to write about common topics which caused me to write a book about nginx and currently planning another one. Ultimately IRC is a tool and like most other tools it is what you make of it. Become a contributor to channels and you will learn so much.
- meowface 13y agoMany IRC channels have the kind of social pecking orders you describe, either in the form of in-groups or general rudeness to newbies, but many are still extremely informative and helpful.
- laumars 13y agoI disagree with this for many application or language specific channels on Freenode. In fact some Freenode communities have a #subject-offtopic channel which is intended for the social chit-chat you described, and if you're seen making small talk in the #subject channels you often find yourself getting your wrists slapped and told to take the conversation elsewhere. As for channels I've found useful; all Freenode: #go-nuts (Go language) #mysql (no explanation needed) #android-dev (for times when I'm scratching my head while writing Android apps) I tend to think of these types of IRC channels as real time support; on occasions when I've tried to resolve an issue myself, failed and couldn't find any applicable manual, blog, nor stackoverflow question online to guide me through.
- maqr 13y agoI'd recommend #iphonedev on Freenode for anything iOS.
- allsystemsgo 13y agoI haven't had great experiences there personally. The conversations aren't the most enlightening and there's a lot of ripping on new developers asking obvious questions. I'm a decent developer at this point, but early on, asking questions in there wasn't pleasant. I'm a big proponent of encouraging new developers of asking lots of questions and those that discourage it are really not helping the community. That said, it's not all bad. I still hop in every now and then.
- uniclaude 13y agoThis is going to be borderline off-topic as it's not general for developers. I have to mention #clojure on freenode for being an incredibly welcoming IRC channel. The discussions you will see can be very interesting, and the community is more than often willing to help. Living in Japan, I was worried about the timezones being an issue, but there seems to be people from different parts of the world on the channel, making it very nice.
- dserban 13y agoThere is one particular use of IRC channels that is insanely useful, that I'd like to share. On various programming language channels, there are ad-hoc expression evaluation bots that experienced people use to guide newcomers through the intricacies of the language. If you're new to Haskell, for example, what you can do is grab the logs for the past 3 years, grep for "> " (used to invoke the evaluator) and you have instant insight into how an experienced Haskeller's mind works. It can speed up your learning by a factor of 10 compared to reading papers / blogs / formal tutorials. I know because it did this for me.
- loser777 13y agoAn approach that seems to work well for me is to use IRC as a way to communicate with groups people that mostly I know in person and share a common interest with. That way, I'm able to avoid a social pecking order or having to be "initiated" into a group. You may already be in one of these groups already, though the medium isn't necessarily always IRC--think Skype (text) chats groups with a subset of regulars. Remember, you can always drag others along with you and start your own channel.
- MileyCyrax 13y ago#wizardchan on irc.rizon.net
- lcasela 13y agoA+ website
- Hoozt 13y ago#linux, #ruby, #rubyonrails, #bitcoin, #javascript, #nginx, #ubuntu, #rubymotion ... to name a few I visit. They are all on the Freenode network.
- gmcwhirter 13y agoMore or less the same for me...
- brihat 13y agoFreenode #emacs, ##linux, #nimrod, #julia and #d. Nimrod's gang (including Araq) are very friendly and welcoming. #julia and #d are very quiet though (except for the bots). And #emacs -- well, that one channel which is lenient towards off-topic chats!
- bulte-rs 13y agoNo... #emacs is not lenient... It's just that everything is applicable to Emacs and vice-verse. ;-)
- Tenoke 13y agoNowadays, I mainly hang out on irc because of the #lesswrong channel on freenode. There is plenty of intelligent discussion, HN readers and no real topic.
- flexd 13y agoI have always found a bunch of nice people with a lot of knowledge in the various programming and tech channels on Freenode, like #twisted and #pocoo #debian on EFNet also has a great bunch of people.
- ultrasandwich 13y agoI would head over to #debian on OFTC, since EFNet blocks Tor :( Perhaps not the same people, but still typically a sizeable room.
- DiabloD3 13y agoThe official #debian is on OFTC, not EFNet.
- flexd 13y agoI did not know that, but the guys on EFNet are still awesome :-)
- spacemanmatt 13y agoThe #postgresql community on freenode has won me over many times for being mature, and absolutely competent over their domain. Solid stuff.
- drob 13y agoAgreed. One can learn a lot of practical postgres from camping out in there. It's also where I found out about a handy tool for demystifying EXPLAIN output: http://explain.depesz.com/ http://explain.depesz.com/
- john2x 13y agoI've found #bash to be full of very helpful people. They don't get tired at all of being asked common bash questions. On most channels, if you ask a common question, they tell you to RTFM. But not on #bash. They still tell you to RTFM, but nicely, and usually after they give you an actual answer. Especially that greybot guy.
- icco 13y ago+1. Bash people are great.
- dogepro 13y ago#marketmakers
- jokoon 13y agojust connect to some popular network like freenode, and retrieve the channel list, and sort by users. #ubuntu 1701 #archlinux 1695 #bitcoin 1602 #debian 1492 ##linux 1360 #python 1349 #freenode 1304 #haskell 1200 #Node.js 1186 #dogecoin 1120 #gentoo 1091 #git 1047 #puppet 956 ##javascript 941 #vim 936 #python-unregistered #go-nuts 893 #android 889 #bash 858 #ruby 847 #jquery 750 #postgresql 747 #litecoin 711 ##math 701 #bitcoin-otc 700 #emacs 700 #openstack 697 #docker 693 #clojure 679 #perl 653 #mysql 646 ##networking 642 #angularjs 621 ##security 611 #defocus 599 ##php 596 ##electronics 595 #nginx 584 #cisco 582 #digitalocean 569
- mparlane 13y agoAnd then pick the channels with the least users.
- draegtun 13y agoAlso note that Perl has its own hosted IRC channels at irc.perl.org
- kmfrk 13y agoPeople are often assholes on IRC. I think the experience of using the channel is part of the OP's question.
- conjecTech 13y agoLate reply, but #electronics is full of the nicest, most helpful people I've ever met.
- rmc 13y agoTangentally related: #gaygeeks on FreeNodes. Tired of being the old LGBT person amoung you geeky friends? Tired of being the only geeky person amoung your LGBT friends?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- amoxibos 13y ago#python - active 24/7 - some Google engineers there as well answering all sorts of questions. #vim - I usually get an answer within about 60 seconds of asking. #laravel - awesome community
- emhart 13y ago#lp101 on ...I think?...EFNet was the hotbed of locksport/mechanical security discussion and research for quite a while. I was amazed by some of the results of IRC-based collaboration in that community.
- hedwall 13y agoI really enjou #infra-talk on FreeNode, sysadminy stuff without ties to any specific product or tool.
- frankwiles 13y agoI've recently been using SaltStack and have found #saltstack on Freenode to be very welcoming and helpful which is nice. Often you go into a channel and it's a ghost town or out right hostile to relatively simple questions. I think OSS projects in general could learn a bit of "marketing" in this regard, if your IRC channels are toxic, I immediately think your community as a whole may be toxic.
- Jedd 13y agoI'll second this -- #salt is a welcoming channel full of informed and helpful types. Similarly #mynt. Heck, I'd suggest that almost any free software project where at least one of the primary developers loiters would be an answer to your question.
- d99kris 13y agoIs there a #hn or #hackernews?
- dmunoz 13y agoNot that I know of. One should really be started, as the suggestion given is usually #startups on Freenode, and I didn't last 5 minutes in that room. Really poor experience from the start. Not that sharing #hn around is going to result in a better room, but it would be great to have some faster conversation around stories posted on HN, among other topics. I know I have had my mind changed, or at least challenged, regarding some of my beliefs from discussion here.
- l0u 13y agoYes. Its not really official though, just a few hang out there. #hackernews on freenode.
- l0u 13y agoSorry, also there is #startups on freenode.
- Zolomon 13y agoI hang out on #gamedev@irc.afternet.org, very talented people help each other out there.
- xsquare 13y ago#programming-language-you-really-like and #distro-you-really-like on Freenode I guess...
- incidence 13y ago#defocus / ##defocus
- diminoten 13y ago##programming on freenode is terrible. Don't go there.
- chadfowler 13y ago#shitfire!!! (on freenode). ;)
- yuvipanda 13y ago#wikipedia-en is a channel where english wikipedia editors and admins hang out, and it is fun watching their discussions. #wikimedia-dev is where most of Mediawiki development happens these days, so that is nice too. #wikimedia-opearations is fun too once you ignore the icinga bot spam - not often do you get to see a world class ops team operate that transparently :)
- hernan604 13y agoHACKED!
- StevePerkins 13y agoI don't know that there are too many interesting "abstract" IRC communities, beyond those Freenode channels specific to a given programming language or technology. I leave a connection to Freenode running while I'm at work, in a few channels related to my job... so that during builds, or other short bursts of idle time, I can glace over and see if there are any questions I can answer. Likewise, I throw out a quick question of my own every now and then, when I'm afraid it's too subjective in nature to avoid being closed by StackOverflow-lawyers. I've lost interest in general chat, outside of specific questions and answers. From what I've seen, the nicer communities are the newer channels. Ironically, they degrade over time as their underlying technology matures. You would think that channels like #clojure and #go-nuts would be populated by immature hipsters, while ##java would be made up of 40-something corporate types. However, I've found that those first two channels are welcoming and thoughtful, with interesting discussion always taking place... whereas ##java (even its mods) frequently sound like pre-teens yelling profanity at each other on XBox Live.
- judk 13y agoAs has been extensively documented, the mainstream kills discussion communities. Being hard to find is a proxy for an intelligence filter. And ones without moderation (such as IRC) suffer the worst.
- lcasela 13y ago#lounge @ entropynet
- chosafine 13y agoirc.entropynet.net is the server, as for some unknown reason they didn't think entropy.net was a good idea.
- DefunctKernel 13y agoIt was already registered?
- TamDenholm 13y agoOne that i run is www.chatwebdev.com webby types mainly UK based.
- jayflux 13y ago#web on freenode for web development
- Killswitch 13y agoWhat up Jayflux, #web is good place full of helpful people regarding all around web development topics.
- cenhyperion 13y agoI've found #web to be slightly toxic.
- emily_b 13y ago#web
- cjstewart88 13y agoYou're welcome to join #nirc, it's a channel originally created for https://github.com/cjstewart88/nirc https://github.com/cjstewart88/nirc but its since turned into a hangout for old coworkers and friends. We are all developers. Sometimes we are helping each other and other times we are talking about random shit... or in the event someone has a nirc question, we talk about that!
- airnomad 13y ago#irssi on freenode, really helpful people
- portmanteaufu 13y ago#rust on irc.mozilla.org. They're a super helpful bunch.
- fmanippo 13y agoFor various tech subjects, servers, bsd, etc. #baot on irc.rizon.net is my go-to.
- jonsterling 13y agoLots of good discussion on ##hott and #agda...
- X41 13y ago#installgentoo on irc.installgentoo.com
- EnderMB 13y agoI'm a bit late to the party, but I've found ##csharp to be a fantastic channel, Very rarely do I not get a great and thoughtful response back to any issues I've had. They're also incredibly helpful when it comes to general .NET questions, which tend to get asked in ##csharp because ##asp.net is usually dead.