I favour Hexchat. Freenode is where a lot of the hacking talk happens, but not all; irc.mozilla.net and irc.gnome.org are other possible networks you might want

I favour Hexchat. Freenode is where a lot of the hacking talk happens, but not all; irc.mozilla.net and irc.gnome.org are other possible networks you might want to visit for "serious business". OFTC is another network where e.g. Clang and Debian things happen.