It's not about parsing text. It's about enabling extension development outside the limitations of the current message format. IRC today is a collection of contr

It's not about parsing text. It's about enabling extension development outside the limitations of the current message format. IRC today is a collection of contradictory conventions, poorly documented mini-protocols, and messy hacks. A lot of users think IRC is simple because all they've ever done is parsed channel messages. Try implementing a complete daemon or client.