
Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC? - ryeguy_24
Curious to know if people still use IRC?  Why or why not?  What do you use it for?  I frankly miss IRC from heavily using it in the 90s.
======
dvtrn
You want to see one of the most fascinating uses of IRC in a focused,
dedicated community let me introduce you to the player group known as the
"Fuel Rats" of Elite:Dangerous[1]. They use IRC for far more than just a hub
to congregate and socialize, 100% of their actual dispatch operations are
planned, coordinated and excuted on IRC.

If you run out of "fuel" in game, and you need a Fuel Rat to come rescue you,
you do it in IRC. Dispatch talks to you in their IRC channel, other
dispatchers are communicating in NOTAM[2] like notation with pilots out
'rescuing' other players.

It's amazing to behold.

[1]
[https://confluence.fuelrats.com/display/FRKB/Rescue+Standard...](https://confluence.fuelrats.com/display/FRKB/Rescue+Standard+Operating+Procedures#RescueStandardOperatingProcedures-
IRCandCommunications)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM)

Disclosure: Fuel Rat 2010-2013, Retired.

~~~
r1nkgrl
Elite:Dangerous wasn't released even in alpha form until 2013. I assume you
were a fuel rat for Elite 3.

When was the origin of Fuel Rats in the franchise?

Have they existed since the first game was first released in 1984? Or only
after IRC came around a few years later?

Very curious about the history of Fuel Rats in the game series, as well the
history of technology these used to communicate.

~~~
teh_klev
> I assume you were a fuel rat for Elite 3

No, these are actual In-Real-Life-People. Maybe parent got their dates a wee
bit wrong.

When I started playing Elite:Dangerous (circa release date 2014?) I ran out of
fuel in a system I couldn't refuel in (wrong type of sun or something like
that)...and so was stuck. The only way out was to self destruct.

After some googling I discovered the Fuel Rats on Reddit and then their IRC
channel. So as per their S.O.P. I put out a call for assistance on their IRC
channel and within 10-15 mins or so one of their crew appeared in-system and
refuelled me. I don't like to abuse the word "awesome", but these folks were
awesome. They were like the AA or RAC of the galaxy :)

~~~
tomjen3
Do you pay for the service or something?

~~~
ljp_206
The service is entirely free, in game and out of game. Fuel Rat 'rescuers' (or
just 'fuel rats,' there might be a better term they use) do it for the fun of
it. It's an amazing example of emergent gameplay.

I've been saved once or twice by fuel rats. The process is fantastic and
seeing the dispatchers in action is fascinating. After they refuel you, they
give you a little talk and help you avoid running out of fuel again.

------
tombert
I love going on Freenode, simply because the people that lurk on any given
project's room have always been incredibly helpful to me, and really nice too.
I am in the #clojure room semi-often (asking silly questions), and
occasionally the Haskell room if I'm up for learning a bit more about theory.

I like how simple IRC is, but I get why so many people have an aversion
towards it. In the age of Slack, telling people to install Weechat and connect
to a server manually is kind of scary. I largely embrace the transition to
something new, but I do have an issue with the open-source world moving to a
proprietary platform.

I wish XMPP were more popular, since I think a federated chat system with an
open protocol is pretty neat, but sadly I fear that the Slack hype-train might
be a bit too far-gone.

~~~
larkeith
> I think a federated chat system with an open protocol is pretty neat

Have you looked into Matrix? It still has a few kinks to work out, but it
seems to fit the bill, and the idea of bridging to other protocols (namely IRC
and Slack) is an interesting idea for reducing friction.

~~~
pgeorgi
I use XMPP with bridging to IRC (to access freenode). There would have been no
need to reinvent that particular wheel. Sadly the hype-train comment upthread
also applies to Matrix.

~~~
larkeith
Well, yes - the hype train is the whole point, as they were looking for
something more popular than XMPP.

Though I would disagree with there being no need for reinvention -
historically (and AFAIK unchanged) there are several real issues with XMPP
[0]. The idea of XMPP appeals to me, but its complexity and UX are costly,
whereas Matrix just works well and is easy to use, which hopefully will allow
it to spread beyond tech circles.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10040848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10040848)

------
mikorym
Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: My colleagues don't want to so I use it mostly for forums. Some
programming languages have chat channels and I have heard that for open source
dev it is still somewhat common but I suspect it is declining. It's a pity
because I think Slack is stupid. Slack does not have the transparency of IRC
and frankly the fact that you can share files and use fonts and indents are
not selling points for me.

EDIT: Slack is stupid _for me_. To each their own I guess?

EDIT2: Just to make it clear, judging from other answers a lot of programmers
use IRC _every day_. But not all of my colleagues are programmers. Some fall
in the chasm between "data science" and programming and for such people IRC is
unfortunately unfamiliar.

~~~
paulcarroty
My bad Slack experience:

\- you should register for every channel

\- switching the channels is slow & non-intuitive

\- tons of sub-channels and collaborations between are painful

~~~
Johnny555
_you should register for every channel_

Some would consider that a feature, you only see the activity of the channels
you've joined (but you can search for others at any time and you can preview
messages in them before joining).

 _switching the channels is slow & non-intuitive_

isn't "/join #channel-name" the same way you switch channels in IRC?

~~~
lifthrasiir
Most IRC clients allow you to quickly switch to frequently viewed channels via
shortcuts (even irssi, a terminal client, does that). With Slack it is a
clunky Ctrl-K and a first few letters of the channel name that may or may not
lead to what you really want.

~~~
madeofpalk
?? Slack has shortcuts for both of these. Cmd+0,1,2,3 to switch between orgs,
opt+up/down to switch between channels. And also, as you mentioned, cmd+k for
search-switching

~~~
lifthrasiir
I know Slack does support shortcuts, but search-switching is inferior to a
direct shortcut. Let's say that you frequently use channels a and b in the org
A and a channel c in the org B (this mode of operation is common). How do you
get to a, b or c without even looking at the screen?

------
spapas82
Yes I use it all the time especially when I'm learning a new thing or
researching a strange behaviour of a program. I prefer much better the freedom
to ask/discuss anything and the fast ask/reply/clarify cycle of IRC than fe
stackoverflow with its strict rules.

Freenode has channels with people that are very helpful and friendly. Some
channels I am frequent and would recommend: #django, #elixir-lang, #kotlin,
#android-dev. I also visit (and get help) #mysql and #postgresql.

Actually I wanted to write a blog post to urge people to learn about and visit
IRC, but I hope that this HN thread will suffice...

Try IRC and you won't regret it!

~~~
ImprovedSilence
For someone starting from scratch, are there any “best practices” for getting
on safely and anonymously? How do I hide my IP?

~~~
giancarlostoro
I pay for and use irccloud. You can probably use a VPN on top of that if you
dont want even then to have your IP. You can also setup a connection bouncer
on a server. Basically you tell it what ircd to connect to and it connects to
it for you masking your IP. This is what IRCCloud does under the hood tbh.

~~~
manjana
Additionally: you may request a cloak which hides your IP address, useful if
you are to visit any dubious channels. on Freenode f.e. you simply ask an
operator at the main channel for one and you have it. Secondly you could also
setup a Digital Ocean droplet (server) with an IRC client and ssh into that.

------
pmoriarty
Absolutely. Freenode is still running strong, and is probably the best place
for live support for a ton of open source projects and Linux distros.

I've tried various other popular chat options (like Discord and Telegram) and
have been really frustrated by some of their limitations -- particularly in
regards to logging, where afaik there's no way to get the logs off their
servers and on to my own machine for archiving, offline browsing/searching,
advanced regex searches, etc. There's also no way to get the logs if you're
not logged in, or if you ever lose access to the servers for some reason.

Discoverability on these alternate chat platforms is also really poor. At
least on IRC I could always try typing in a channel like #gentoo or #linux or
#debian or #ocaml or #scheme or #lisp or #emacs or #vim, etc, and have a
pretty good chance of these subject-related channels existing. On Discord and
Telegram, I have to find a link to the channel somehow or get invited. Which
is great for private channels, but for channels that you want anyone with an
interest in the subject to join, it's simply awful.

That said, they do have some advantages, like integrated images, video, and
audio.. and if you need those features, then vanilla IRC certainly isn't good
enough. But for me, who does 99.9% of my chatting in plain text, those other
features are very rarely necessary and IRC suits my needs just fine. Also,
with IRC one could at least always post links to external image/video/audio
hosting sites, if you wanted to share that sort of media... which, again, is
good enough for me most of the time. In fact, things like videos and images
poping up all over the place on chat platforms like Telegram and Discord are
just annoying most of the time anyway.

------
xDest
Just to note this here as it seems this hasn't been mentioned yet, the Twitch
chat is based on IRC. They run their own servers and you have to log in with
your Twitch credentials but you can user your usual IRC client to connect to
the Twitch IRC.

In addition, special Twitch IRC clients have spawned, like TC [1] or Chatty
[2] that include support for Twitch-specifics like Emotes, notifications and
direct linking to the associated video streams.

[1] [https://gettc.xyz/](https://gettc.xyz/)

[2] [http://chatty.github.io/](http://chatty.github.io/)

~~~
gempir
It's amazing what people have been able to build because Twitch chose the open
IRC standard.

Anyone interested in C++ and Twitch should checkout a project of good friends
of mine
[https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2](https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2)

A crossplatform chat client for Twitch in QT so no electron BS.

Personally I have also really enjoyed developing chat bots for fun tasks or
logging. So IRC is definetely a big part why I love programming so much.

------
spudlyo
Every day. I have a long running tmux session running irssi on a community
Linux host that's been humming along in some forgotten corner of a vast data
center for the past 11.71 years[0]. My ~/.irssi/config has me on a number of
channels on a handful of different servers. Some on networks like
chat.freenode.net and irc.mibbit.net, and some on single servers hosted by
different groups of friends.

Freenode has been really helpful for me. I've had great conversations on
##aws, #lfs, #tmux, and #hammerspoon in recent weeks.

[0]:

    
    
        root@eidolon:~# smartctl --all /dev/sda | grep Power_On_Hours | cut -c88-
        102567

~~~
INTPenis
Waait a minute. I know we used to love sharing uptime on IRC back in the 90s
but these days it's just irresponsible to leave a server running for 11 years
without reboots.

Because when has it ever been patched? You know vulnerabilities in IRC clients
do exist. That's why we were always told to not irc with root back in the days
of BitchX.

~~~
jdsnape
I think that command is showing you the total number of hours the system has
been running, not the uptime - so it could have been rebooted for patching

[Edit] - Slightly pedantically, it's the number of hours one of the disks has
been powered up

~~~
spudlyo
That's right. We've got 4 bog standard 750G WD Caviar Blues in a software RAID
array in that machine, all powered up for 11+ years, none of which appear to
have caught any errors during that time. Pretty amazing.

The OS has been updated and the box rebooted for kernel updates a number of
times over the years.

------
prophesi
Freenode is still pretty active. I self-host an instance of The Lounge[0],
which basically acts like an IRC bouncer + an account system to easily get
friends/coworkers to use IRC.

I primarily use it for giving/getting help on technologies and open-source
projects that I'm using.

[0]
[https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge](https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge)

~~~
_wmd
While Freenode may not compete with Facebook, it's still pretty huge :)

    
    
        There are 99 users and 84066 invisible on 32 servers
        36 IRC Operators online
        16 unknown connection(s)
        53438 channels formed 
        I have 5185 clients and 1 servers
        5185 5972 Current local users 5185, max 5972
        84165 94773 Current global users 84165, max 94773
        Highest connection count: 5973 (5972 clients) (476397 connections received)

------
death_syn
I still use it as my primary form of communication. Only one job in my
professional career have I NOT gotten from IRC. I use it mainly for
conversational chats these days, though I still do get/give support on
Freenode occasionally.

I know Slack is the new darling for these things, but their WebUI is so
inefficient compared my IRC muscle memory. Wee-slack is great for the Slacks I
can use it on (but nearly none of the community Slacks have open API slots for
it.)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Yep, I use IRC all day, every day. I keep in touch with many of my friends on
IRC, hang out in social and technical channels, organize developers on my
projects, provide support channels on IRC, ask questions and reach out to
projects I'm collaborating with... I'm in hundreds of channels on a dozen
networks. I run a dozen IRC bots. IRC is still king. Nothing beats plaintext
communication on a well-established protocol with hundreds of implementations.
Least of all a proprietary walled garden like Slack, Discord, etc

------
macandcheese
If you think you don't like Slack, just wait until your company forces you to
use Microsoft Teams ... Slack is really focused, performant, and an absolute
joy to use in comparison.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
This is just a specific case of the more general: "If you think you don't like
X, just wait until your company forces you to use Microsoft Y."

~~~
garren
Is that a law? I feel like that should be a law:

If you think you don't like X, just wait until your company forces you to use
Microsoft Y.

\- _emacsomancer_'s law

I've used slack for school, and it was pretty useful. I'm using Teams at work,
and it seems remarkably less so. I'm not sure if it's because nobody's
comfortable using it for anything other than skype meetings, or because it
somehow seems less intuitive or well thought out as slack. Probably a bit of
both.

One thing that kind of kills me - we use visualstudio.com too for git
(incidentally, it's interesting to see a strong tfs team struggling with git -
vs/git integration is useful only if you're relative comfortable with git in
the first place), and there doesn't seem to be any kind of strong integration
between vs.com and ms teams. That's weird. I see my team on teams, I converse
with them on teams, I have access to my backlog items on teams (with an azure
plugin), but why can't I see my team's board? vs.com's UI takes some getting
used to, but at the very least it seems like it should be accessible, with
very little additional work, within teams.

Teams feels a lot like a half-baked (maybe 3/4 baked) response to Slack that
could really be so much more.

~~~
froindt
"and there doesn't seem to be any kind of strong integration between vs.com
and ms teams"

Is Teams the bastard stepchild of Microsoft? I haven't used Teams, but I
recall reading a personal account probably 6 years ago about what working on
Google+ was like. Every time something integrated to it, it was a mess and
dragged the other products down. Word got around and groups actively avoided
the Google+ team and were scrambling for justification as to why they
shouldn't get integrated.

0 chance I could find the comment now, but it stuck with me all these years.

~~~
jodrellblank
_Is Teams the bastard stepchild of Microsoft?_

Teams is replacing Skype for Business.

------
swiftcoder
IRC is still the backup communication network at large tech firms - I can
personally attest to its use at Amazon and Facebook. Typically there are
other, more advanced chat platforms in use for day-to-day (Amazon Chime and
WorkChat, respectively), but when shit hits the fan those have deep dependency
chains, whereas IRC basically just needs a single box with a network
connection...

~~~
mattlondon
Google SRE too according to [https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-
book/chapters/managing-in...](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-
book/chapters/managing-incidents/)

And as everyone knows Google have a lot of chat products!

------
k_sze
I used to be on Efnet and DALnet and ETG servers a lot in the 90s and 00s for
anime. Now I’m on Freenode _all_ the time for #python, #django, #ubuntu,
#debian, etc. It’s a good place to ask quick questions. But even more
importantly, I use it for rubberducking
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)),
especially when I’m digging deep into an issue in a particular piece of
software and I don’t expect my colleagues in the office to (immediately)
understand what I’m talking about.

I’m even in ##latin to learn, you guessed it, the Latin language.

~~~
ksaj
Weirdly this is the first time I've hearing the term, even though it is
something I've practiced for years. Basically I was taught that if you ever
really wanted to understand or proof something, teach it to someone else.

Thanks! Now I have a term for it.

------
theshrike79
Been using IRC pretty much daily for over 25 years, and I'm not stopping.
That's where my friends are, most of whom are old-ish farts like me.

Also I like the barrier to entry IRC has, it keeps the worst of the worst out
because you need some technical skill to even get in. That's why most
programming language / distro channels on IRC are of better quality than
random slacks or discord servers.

~~~
Lorkki
Technically, the barrier to entry is as low these days as any other messaging
service: you can sign up on IRCCloud and instantly have a friendly browser-
based experience without worrying about setting up a persistent client,
logging etc. by yourself, and mobile and desktop clients are available.

These days the network effects just favour old farts and engineers.

------
aewens
Yes! I am one of the IRC operators for the IRC network Tilde Chat[0]. It is
the main source of communication for the Tildeverse[1] community which is a
group of Linux/BSD servers that offer free shell accounts to whoever wants
one. It's a niche little community, but if you like unix and chatting on IRC
then you'll feel right at home.

[0] [https://tilde.chat](https://tilde.chat)

[1] [https://tildeverse.org](https://tildeverse.org)

~~~
ryeguy_24
Tilde was just mentioned in the front page story of Wired.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-defense-
difficu...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-we-love-tech-defense-difficult-
industry/)

------
giancarlostoro
I use irccloud and I go on the DarkScience[0] IRCd. I even went as far as
paying for the 1 year, I like just having it all in 1 client that never drops.
I know I can setup a bouncer, but oh well. I prefer smaller communities. When
I need programming or OS help I go on freenode where plenty of language
communities are. Edit: Found out irccloud now supports connection bouncing, so
you can use any irc client with them too[1].

[0]: [https://www.darkscience.net/](https://www.darkscience.net/)

[1]: [https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/](https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/)

~~~
johnmaguire2013
Another vote for DarkScience. I'm currently using weechat on my home NAS but
considering IRCCloud, especially with that announcement.

------
dangayle
I love IRC, particularly #freenode. I really detest having to first search out
then go through the whole process of signing up for yet another Slack group.

------
xxpor
We use IRC heavily at work. Slack is banned since it's communicating though a
3rd party service. I prefer IRC anyway.

~~~
test1235
What setup do you use? Do you manage your own servers? What about non-devs?

------
AdmiralAsshat
Tech support, guidance on opening bug reports, etc. There are some projects
where there's not an open forum to post questions, but opening an issue or
filing a bug report will immediately get your head bitten off by an angry dev
unless you've read X number of docs, combed through closed issues to make sure
it hasn't been asked previously, reproduced the issue, provided a GDB
stacktrace of the issue occurring, etc.

IRC support channels can provide some immediate front-line support and allow
you to ask basic questions without being told to go die in a fire.

~~~
ryeguy_24
I guess double edged sword. People can use it however they like (which is
great) but also not always open to newcomers who don't fall in line yet.

------
mistrial9
Freenode traffic on certain channels has gone way, way down, like dead, no
action, long-term lurk only. I suspect many 20-somethings (or younger) have
never heard of Freenode, and why would they, it does not work on a smart-
phone. Meanwhile, rich content services that _do_ work on phones, seem to be
very, very popular and growing constantly. Personally, I do not trust all
communications to a corporate entity. It would be a better world if
distributed FOSS systems, perhaps Freenode? get better somehow

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
All it takes is an IRC app.

~~~
ExBritNStuff
Phone IRC apps are the most annoying things in the world. Constant join and
part messages as they disconnect and reconnect. That's one advantage of things
like Slack; they handle persistence at the server level, rather than relying
on the client. That being said, I'm a huge IRC fan and use it at work all day
every day on two internally managed servers.

~~~
kaetemi
IRCCloud

~~~
giancarlostoro
I agree there. I dont worry about anything with irccloud. You might be able to
achieve the same with a bouncer but then you still gotta invest in hosting one
too.

~~~
bpye
If you don't want to pay for IRCCloud I would totally vouch for Matrix. I've
hosted Quassel, ZNC and The Longue and different times but moving to Matrix
and their IRC bridge has made my life much easier.

------
dustfinger
I use rcirc [1] on Gentoo from exwm [2]. I frequent freenode, oftc [3].
Honestly, I love irc. Also, exwm changed how I work in a very positive way.
Next, I want to try the Next browser written in Lisp [4]. Although I have
never used it, I know of people that use Bitl Bee [5] to interface with slack
from emacs irc clients.

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rcirc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rcirc)

[2][https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm](https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm)

[3][https://www.oftc.net/](https://www.oftc.net/)

[4][https://next.atlas.engineer/](https://next.atlas.engineer/)

[5][https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BitlBee](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BitlBee)

------
agumonkey
Everyday.

It's a fix point of internet chatting. It has just enough, people on it are
either ~ok or great, it requires barely nothing.

I may have ran slack once but didn't stay. I used discord to talk to collapse
minded groups, and although discord seems a great piece of work (audio chat is
neatly done), both the resources required and the structure/format made
chatting way less flowing compared to IRC.

------
akulbe
Every day, for nearly 20 years. I won't stop until it's gone. Social networks
come and go... IRC has outlasted all of 'em.

------
alpb
Disclaimer: I work at Google.

IRC is still actively used as a main communication channel internally at
Google to coordinate during outages due to its reliable and low-dependency
nature (where a Slack equivalent app relies on hundreds of service
dependencies). I know for a fact that Google is not the only company, and many
others that practice SRE-like roles do the same.

------
heldrida
Yes, Freenode! IRC is way better because it's minimal, fast, immediate
feedback and people seem to be more interested in exchanging ideas, help, etc
- the community seems to be way more skilled than the new generation of coders
who use those web-based chat services. There are no photos, etc. You need to
think before posting a question, needs to be clear. If you visit one of these
web chat thingies, you'll notice that people take ages to reply if they do end
up replying back to you; In IRC it's live!

------
guidoism
If you work for a company that provides a popular chat service and your team
is one of the main dependencies then you use IRC while working on finding and
fixing the cause of the outage. It’s not sexy but when everything else fails
it does the job.

Source: I worked on one of those teams.

------
superkuh
Of course, Ryan @ Co-Founder of Advertising Your Business.io. Since 1995 and
my usage has only increased over the years.

------
elagost
I use it most days - I have a Quassel ([https://quassel-
irc.org](https://quassel-irc.org)) core set up on my raspberry pi, and connect
to it with my phone/laptop. Official support communities for most Linux
distros, general chat, and more technically-focused communities are there.
It's the only form of 'social network' I use - otherwise I just don't use
social networks.

------
dpedu
Every single day! Both to grouse about technology in channels dedicated to
them and to speak socially with friends.

I find it pretty confusing that I see posts like "is IRC dead?" or "does
anyone still use IRC?" as often as I do. I find IRC is a very active and I'm
constantly discovering new corners of it. I'm on about 15 networks and know
there are many, many more I haven't explored.

------
Arkanosis
I'm on Freenode from time to time, mostly for Wikimedia and a bit for free
software support as well. I'd be there all the time if I had more time.

I've seen a lot of people switching to XMPP, then Facebook, then Gitter, then
Discord, then Slack, then… At the end, the result is mostly a fragmented
community because not everyone is moving to the next trendy protocol, and
there is an increasing number of alternatives. Sure, there's some merit in
lowering the effort for newcomers, but it doesn't fully outweight its cost,
IMHO.

IRC is the only protocol that remains widely used in the (very) long run and
doesn't die when it gets out of fashion (see: it's been out of fashion since
before fashion protocols were born).

I'm closely following Matrix, though, because of the bridges (especially the
IRC bridge, obviously).

------
dijit
I still run an IRC network with over 400 users.

Not sure what I'd do without them, it feels like a "real" social network,
where we are different people chatting in real time over several days, the
simplicity of the protocol forces people to be clear in their words and not
use excessive emoji (although, yes, IRC does support emoji)

If anything the decline of other groups running their own IRC has been good
for mine, as their groups decide to continue living by becoming a channel on
my network- then their members bleed into all of our social groups in addition
to their own, obviously it won't last. But for now it feels very natural and
organic.

If you want to join we're on irc.darkscience.net/+6697 (SSL) #darkscience

however, I used to use IRC at work, that seems to have been taken over by
slack in most companies though.

------
souprock
I use it all the time at work. Along with Mattermost (yuck) it is a solution
that works on a secured network. If your computer can reach something like
Slack, your computer is exposed.

At home I recently used it to chat with open source developers about a bug.
They found the cause, then my son and I fixed it.

~~~
rvense
I'm very curious why you dislike Mattermost, my company has been considering
moving over from Slack, but we've not spent a lot of time evaluating it - they
seem very similar on the surface?

~~~
souprock
You might be happy with Mattermost. It's not IRC, and that is reason enough
for me to grumble about it.

Anything that help to break the addiction of putting trade secrets on
internet-connected computers is an improvement over slack.

------
readingnews
Not only do I use it quite often (wow, the developers you can talk to who hang
out on linux forums), but I know a number of companies where the entire tech
team just hangs out in the company channel, getting things done. Faster than
email, the terminal is always open, live chat...

------
bhaak
The NetHack community is pretty much centered around IRC. After the demise of
Usenet, much of the discussions shifted to the Freenode IRC networks with
[https://nethackwiki.com/](https://nethackwiki.com/) being the place for
dumping less fleeting information.

There are various channels for NetHack variants and for the different public
servers that offer online play. Most discussions happen on the public server
du jour channel, currently this would be #nethack-hardfought.

Lately, there has opened up a connection to the roguelikes Discord server
([https://discord.gg/vg9WWf2](https://discord.gg/vg9WWf2)) with two-way
bridges from Discord to IRC and back.

------
yborg
IRC remains in use in the Japanese manga/anime fan translation community on
Rizon.

------
rocky1138
Every day. I run my own "thelounge" instance, which is a node app sitting on
one of my VPS servers. It's web-based and running all the time, so it's very
easy to read stuff I missed while I was "offline".

~~~
orliesaurus
How can you open up thelounge without compromising everyone on the same box?
Is there any in built protection in thelounge against people abusing your
service to enter irc? Basically I don't want to get myself K-lined for someone
else's wrongdoings

~~~
MaxLeiter
You can use private mode which requires logging in.

For public instances, you can contact the server about setting up / using
WebIRC to handle multiple connections from the same box.

------
curiousfab
I am logged into several channels 24/7, in one (with a close group of friends)
pretty much without a break since about 1999. I also frequent some channels
with technical topics.

IRC appeals to me by its simplicicy, just like good old plain text email does.
It is a great design that has outlived many of the better, more colourful or
more modern alternatives, and will continue to do so.

Like everywhere on the internet there is a resident braggart, a few weirdos
and a few ever silent lurkers in every channel, but after 20+ years on this
medium my mental filters are well honed.

------
jokoon
When I have questions that I don't really expect Google to have answers for, I
use IRC.

Mostly about second opinions, in depth technical stuff, or when I don't have
time to create a question on stack overflow because Google can't always find
the lexical context between my Google search and the actual solution.

Chat is also much better than forums when you want to interact. Slack and
discord are bloated software, which are centralized. IRC is much more
lightweight and simple, and most of the time logs are available. It's more
open.

------
muppetman
I still use IRC heaps! I idle on efnet just for old times sake (I hang out in
#LiCe and #epic, I still maintain the LiCe IRC Script which was popular back
in 1994. Yes, 25 years ago. I hang out in PfSense, Proxmox and rspamd to offer
(and get) assistance with those OpenSource projects. And a number of the
private trackers I use still heavily rely on IRC as a means of communication.

So yea, it's still used. But it's certainly dwindling.

------
codyb
All the time. Easily the best forum I’ve found for asking a quick question on
occasion. Not every community is super lively but there’s some good ones and
it’s nice to see the regulars after all these years.

And it’s nice that after a while just by taking a break and checking the
conversation out, you’ll start answering people’s questions too. Always nice
to help someone out.

Freenode will always have a place in my heart and an open window on my
desktop.

------
alxmdev
I almost got into IRC ten years ago, when I was active in a programming
community that used it in addition to their message board. The idea of having
to keep my computer on all the time in order to stay in the loop, and having
to learn yet another set of arcane commands for a _chat window_ , was a big
turn off then. I wouldn't even consider it today unless there was a specific
need to use it, sorry.

~~~
300bps
There are probably over 100 IRC clients that don’t require arcane commands and
you certainly don’t need to keep your computer on all the time.

mIRC is an IRC client that has been around for 24 years and makes IRC very
easy.

I stopped using IRC about 20 years ago but I got a lot of knowledge out of my
time on DALnet and then Undernet.

------
devin
Google does. Their SREs are big fans as I understand it.

~~~
ionwake
Weirdly I found their GAE channel unfriendly and unhelpful when google took my
startup offline as part of non sensical upgrade process

------
dredmorbius
The Archive Team of independent website archivists use IRC, on Efnet, to
communicate, coordinate, and plan. I got to witness and particiate in the
"googleminus" project which succeeded in capturing 98% of public Google+
content before that site went down.

The ability to collaborate, combine and share information, and respond to
contingencies on the fly was impressive.

------
nickjj
Been using it since the late 1990s. Freenode is still very active for tech.

------
EnderMB
I like IRC, and I'd like to use it more, but it all depends on the community.

Back when I was getting to grips with .NET, the #csharp channel was invaluable
in getting immediate technical help. They were the ones that introduced me to
LINQ, Hangfire, and reverse proxying with nginx. Despite also being an avid
Stack Overflow user at the time, #csharp was a far more approachable place,
and I'll always be thankful for their support.

Nearly two years ago I picked up Ruby, but sadly the IRC communities around
Ruby and Rails seem pretty dead, especially compared to Slack. I'm sure it's
mostly lurkers, but I've always preferred to see lively IRC channels, where
you could jump in at any point and see technical discussion or just shooting
the breeze. Sometimes, I'd just go to a channel to chat about my day, or about
the tech scene where I am compared to where others live.

------
smilesnd
Yep been using IRC for over 10 years now and still love it. Always seem like
any gui base chat client required more resources then they should. Also the
clients didn't allow for modifications I would want/need. Also at the time
getting into desktop chat clients one of the popular ones to make profit turn
their client into a massive botnet selling cpu power to business. This lead me
to distrust gui clients early on.

I recently had a handful of friends that wanted to get away from IRC mainly
because smart phone interaction is not the best. Since we switched to keybase
I feel like we talk less. Also the desktop client doesn't close without using
kill command which makes me open it less.

I use IRC just for chatting with friends and strangers on internet. Shout out
to the #csharp channel on freenode some great people that regularly answer
questions and help people out.

------
Dowwie
Python, Rust, and Postgresql have all had really great IRC communities.
Unfortunately, stakeholders in Rust decided to move to discord and
decommission the Mozilla server, but there remains a determined smaller
community on Freenode, ##rust.

IRC remains one of the best ways to connect with technologists and talk shop.

~~~
steveklabnik
To be clear, the Rust teams decided (mostly) to move to Discord and Zulip;
Mozilla decided to disband its IRC. These decisions were made by disjoint sets
of people.

------
microcolonel
IRC is great. I've been on Freenode since I was an obnoxious teen. There are
upsides and downsides to not (generally) having server-side channel history;
one big upshot is that nobody needs to maintain the infrastructure to store,
curate, and archive 30 years of IRC logs for a whole network.

XMPP is still a mess after all these years; there is no reason you should have
to send so much XML just to send an IM or update your presence.

I'm kinda waiting for SMTP to receive the slight adaptations it requires to be
a decent IM protocol. As a long time SMTP operator, I think it's pretty darn
close (especially looking at the way Gmail and Inbox [RIP] show threads), if
SMTP daemons would cache trusted/known well behaved hosts, or batch/stream
envelopes, that's prettymuch all that's missing on the server side.

------
floatingatoll
I used IRC from 1992 to 2019, and was gradually pushed away from IRC by years
of harassment from anonymous/registered accounts. It turns out that IRC's
anonymity is incompatible with harassment swarming behaviors. I'm sad to see
it fail as a social platform, but I won't miss it.

~~~
Doxin
Any vaguely modern IRC server runs nameserv and allows you to block
unregistered nicks from channels. It's not by any means a solved problem but
it's a good stopgap against spam floods and the like.

~~~
floatingatoll
Yes, that was available, and didn’t help. But I appreciate the thought.

------
Furiosity
I've been constantly logged in to IRC at home since 2002 or so. I am active
nearly every day.

At work most of the coordination between programmers is via IRC--even though
we're all in the same room.

So yeah, IRC is still used.

Anecdotally the population of some popular channels on freenode that I
frequent has never been higher.

------
edmundhuber
Yes. I co-run a small, quirky IRC network/channel. We welcome all peoples who
enjoy fun and discussing programming/hardware/technical stuff. Details here
[https://irc.darwin.network/](https://irc.darwin.network/)

------
iuguy
Of course. I use IRC for a bunch of different reasons. I have some bots, I
occasionally frequent a few channels related to specific topics and it's a
place where the snr can be quite high at times thanks to the fact that most of
the noise is on other networks.

------
jodrellblank
I use a chatroom which is bridged between IRC/Slack/Discord. I stuck with IRC
for a while out of hate for Slack and then I moved to Discord out of hate for
Slack.

General experience is, the worst inputs come from the IRC interface.
Occasionally that is a regular with a long running connection, or a genuine
interaction with a normal person, but handwavingly-mostly the IRC side is
someone who has clicked on a web IRC gateway, doesn't know what they're
looking at, wants a "give me the codes" style answer or just wants to rant,
doesn't respond to people when they offer help, and doesn't stick around. Most
people who join IRC and stick around, join and ask "oh there's a Discord, how
can I get an invite?". The only genuine spam I've seen came from the IRC side,
things like religious spam/flood messages. The biggest restrictions on things
like inline-code are that the IRC interface can't deal, because it risks
getting rate-limited for "flooding" the IRC servers because one bot user is
echoing all the chat from every other user. Markdown which works well enough
in Slack and Discord is left as Markdown markup and makes examples look broken
in most (all?) IRC clients. The slack and Discord can usefully impersonate
each other's users with a hint that you're looking at text from a relay, IRC
can't so all the text actually comes from a relay bot user which breaks nick
highlighting, nake autocomplete, channel connected user lists.

The Slack experience is still user-hostile and indefensibly poor, I yearn for
the days when typing some plain text didn't have 5-10 seconds of lag all over
the place, but the Discord user experience side is tolerably fine in almost
every way, and better in many ways, except the ideology of it being
proprietary and closed source and slurping data into the cloud forever.

I leave my IRC bouncer running, and for a while I used it to join other IRC
channels. But IRC increasingly felt like that's all anyone does - typical
experience of finding a random channel - dozens of users and nothing but
join/parts for the past couple of days.

[just wants to rant / hate for Slack - this also includes me, btw]

~~~
caf
_...typical experience of finding a random channel - dozens of users and
nothing but join /parts for the past couple of days._

Often you'll find that if you ask a question and wait long enough for people
to notice, that'll spark quite an active conversation.

------
drake01
Yes, irssi is still my favorite. Channels I like hanging out on #django,
##linux. Keeping an eye on ii. This:
[https://tools.suckless.org/ii/](https://tools.suckless.org/ii/)

------
fouc
It's my understanding that
[https://www.irccloud.com](https://www.irccloud.com) is a good contender for
getting a slack-like experience for irc, i.e. good mobile client etc.

~~~
lbotos
I was an IRCCloud customer for a while. It was really good, and I left because
my friends switched to a slack. :(

Idling in IRC was 10x better than slack.

~~~
fouc
I feel like there's gotta be a way to re-create the irc/slack interface with
the right sort of scraper setup.

------
andrewjanke
One more "yes, daily" here. I'm on Freenode for tech topics: #octave,
##matlab, #zsh, #bash, #machomebrew, and #macports are active and useful.

And I have a group of friends who are on a private IRC server and have been
for years. We recently considered switching to a "modern" chat platform. Tried
Slack, Matrix, Mattermost, Zulip, and a couple others. Decided we still liked
the "feel" of IRC best. (I hate all the whitespace and decoration that modern
PWAs use.)

Bouncers or IRCCloud solve the offline-delivery problem, and I can live
without the other features that newer chat systems provide.

------
skwidge
I do on occasion but just for social purposes, not for work.

I'm still confused/impressed at how slack took a free service, stuck something
similar but not quite as good in a browser, sold subscriptions and got rich
doing it.

~~~
sundbry
Emojis.

~~~
rvense
giphy.

------
stdcall83
I'm using it extensively for open source development. Mostly Linux kernel and
Uboot.

I have a "the lounge" server running on digital ocean droplet so I can connect
easily.

Giving free users accounts to my server if anyone is interested.

Drop me a line.

------
Foxboron
I do! I have 91 windows open in my current irssi session. I think only 50 of
those are actual channels and the other half is active or dead queries between
people.

I use have slack for some group of friends, but I have been less active after
they removed the IRC bridge. I try to avoid Discord.

IRC is also used for my core group of friends, some of them I got over when we
started University together as I couldn't stand Facebook messenger. A lot of
time is also spent on various open-source projects, mainly Arch Linux but also
security related channels and misc projects.

------
LinuxBender
Off and on I've used it for technical discussions, questions, etc, around
various open source projects. I've shut down all my IRC servers. Most folks
moved to Discord or Slack.

------
zzo38computer
Yes, I still use IRC. I use it on Freenode and also a few others. I would like
to have server-side logging (and have implemented it in a IRC server software
once experimentally), but nobody else seems to have that. (It has nothing to
do with the protocol, but rather, with the implementation.)

Since now some people are using Discord instead, I am not communicating with
them. IRC is much better than Slack and Discord and Matrix. (I also think that
they should make this Hacker News available with NNTP, too.)

------
dexen
Yes of course. Both for technical and for social activities.

Side note, there's a very nice IRC log service ran by Whitequark [1] - yes,
the one of Glasgow fame. The source is available[2], so you can set up your
own too.

[1]
[https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/](https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/)

[2]
[https://github.com/whitequark/irclogger](https://github.com/whitequark/irclogger)

------
tfont
Yes.

I hate Slack with a passion. I am on 14+ servers and it's completely
impossible to manage, mostly because of memory.

Recently, I've decided to make a chat client (desktop) natively with C++ for
Windows, Linux, and OSX that has a smooth layout like the original AIM (very
easy to use). Including, with future plans to do audio/video chats and screen
sharing including file sharing.

I just hope that within time, I will be able to release something to the
world.

------
jchw
I use IRCCloud, and sit mostly on a few Freenode channels. It’s still pretty
common for open source developers to congregate on IRC.

I used to run a personal ZNC instance when I still used IRC to socialize, but
Discord killed it all, and honestly as stuff got “too big” I even left a lot
of the Discord servers as well to escape the nasty annoying drama. Now IRC
Cloud makes more sense because it gives me push notifications; I don’t
actively sit on IRC much now.

------
nikanj
Yes. In a weird way, it acts like a third place (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place)
) online. If I join #mountaincycles, there's bound to be people there who are
somewhat interested in mountain cycles. The discussion usually is in no way
moderated or limited to be just about cycles, though.

------
e12e
I don't, but I use weechat (wee-slack) for 99% of my desktop slack. Less
obtrusive than the stand alone and web clients. And way less resource hungry.

I don't use slack outside of work, but I always have the idea of using weechat
more - for irc and/or other protocols.

[https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack](https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-
slack)

------
kashyapc
Yes! I'm an active IRC user for professional open source work (and personal
projects) for the last 10-ish years. And still going strong.

What many people say IRC "lack" in comparison with Slack (or whatever new-
fangled tool of the day is) are its _strengths_. What I value in IRC: lack of
clutter, simplicity, bloat-freeness, open standard, and not least of all,
blazing fast, among others.

Sure, IRC has its limitations, and is not suitable in certain scenarios. But
is still shines brightly when it comes to distraction-free, text-based
communication.

(I'm also hoping the Matrix protocol takes off.)

Obligatory XKCD reference:

[https://xkcd.com/1782/](https://xkcd.com/1782/) \-- Team Chat

~~~
jeduardo
I also hope Matrix takes off. I have been using riot.im for some time to check
if it could replace the many chat applications one is forced to use these days
(FBMessenger, Slack, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc).

It does have its quirks but I'm finding the ability of having e2e-encrypted
chat with multiple parties in a way I can move across devices quite useful. It
also does support some more modern features like sharing pictures, files, and
emojis without major issues.

Didn't bother to find and try a text-based client yet, although matrix does
seem to have an IRC gateway (of course):
[https://matrix.org/docs/projects/as/irc-
bridge.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/as/irc-bridge.html)

~~~
Arathorn
weechat-matrix ([https://github.com/poljar/weechat-
matrix](https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix)) is an excellent text-
interface client with full E2E support, fwiw :)

------
mitsakos
Every single day. Logged in > 30 channels and talking to >20 people every day.
It's a prereq for work anyway (more than half the company is actually on IRC).
I also vastly prefer it to other solutions (yes, I tried slack, matrix,
mattermost, discord, skype, google
chat/hangouts/meet/whatevergooglecallsitthesedays - they all in some way)

------
jtl999
I love IRC.

Only really been on Freenode and a few other smaller networks (since the glory
days of EFNet et al were before my time) but since 2008 I've met countless
friends, some of which I know in person and I love working on open source
projects with small but dedicated communities, which often use IRC.

Now if you excuse me I need to go move my bouncer to another box :)

------
jlrubin
I have at various points used IRC more or less actively. It's necessary for
Bitcoin r&d more or less. I've also used Zephyr more often in the past (MIT
has a lot of users), and found it's ability to handle topics in a channel (and
diversions) easier to work with than IRCs single stream.

------
detaro
Yes. While it certainly has it's faults, it provides simple basics and has a
wide variety of clients (which IMHO is the biggest downside of many
alternatives, in that they either do not have alternative clients or the
alternative clients do not function quite as the main ones)

------
yakshaving_jgt
I have Freenode #haskell open pretty much all the time. There's some
exceptionally clever people in there, and they're all polite, friendly, and
generous with their time.

Also the #postgresql channel is great.

I'm using the weechat client, which I found much easier to use and more
polished than irssi.

------
anarcat
I do. For everything: Twitter, Mastodon, Jabber, and of course IRC, everything
goes over IRC.

And while I am sorry to see people reinventing the wheel with all those crazy
web-based protocols, I can't help but think it's kind of nice with less people
around. :p

------
silversconfused
I collaborate (er, troll and shitpost) on Freenode in #postmarketos, #reprap,
and #devuan

------
warp_factor
I wish people would be able to keep things simple and still use IRC instead of
bullshit "productivity" apps like Slack

~~~
sebbean
does irc show link previews?

~~~
orev
IRC is a protocol, not an app. Many apps can connect to it. An app can show
previews if it wants to.

~~~
warp_factor
Good point.

What I meant is use an open protocol to which simple applications (or whatever
you prefer to use) can be plugged.

Because my company uses Slack I now have to use their stupid UI proprietary
implementation.

I'm also annoyed that popular open source projects like Kubernetes moved to
Slack because it's "discriminatory" to use IRC apparently.

~~~
noodlesUK
Discriminatory? Link?

~~~
vthriller
Here's an example from Mozilla:

> While we still use it heavily, IRC is an ongoing source of abuse and
> harassment for many of our colleagues

[http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-
text/?s](http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/?s)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763276)

------
nsx147
I miss IRC too. Unfortunately I cannot find a good mac IRC client and that
seriously has inhibited my desire to use it.

I used to use gamesurge and enterthegame servers mainly to hang and chat with
other gaming buddies. So much has changed since then

~~~
skyfaller
I like LimeChat [http://limechat.net/mac/](http://limechat.net/mac/) for an
open source app, it's been somewhat dormant but it got an update semi-
recently.

Textual [https://www.codeux.com/textual/](https://www.codeux.com/textual/) is
a proprietary paid app that seems to be under more active development. I used
it for a bit and enjoyed it, but prefer FOSS when possible and switched back
to LimeChat when it got updated again.

~~~
andrewjanke
LimeChat is great. I use their mobile version, and it is about the _fastest_
iOS app I've ever used.

I'm still Textual on the desktop, though.

------
TheSeeker11
I do indeed. I use Monochrome as my client - written by the author of
foobar2000
[https://perkele.cc/software/monochrome](https://perkele.cc/software/monochrome)

------
Angostura
Yes, I use it quite a bit. There are a couple of good Mac-focused channels on
Freenode. I think I originally went there for the Hackernews #startups channel
where there were interesting peopple talking about interesting things.

------
Kliment
Daily, it's my primary online social communication tool. Nothing else
compares.

------
derpherpsson
I use it.

It's neat for finding those wonderful little crazy communities that are hiding
out in the anonymizing crypto nets (Tor, I2P, LokiNet, ..)

It's the only place left where there are ONLY real terminal junkies and nerds.
No normies. I can relax.

------
salutonmundo
Yes. (With Hexchat, if you're interested.)

There are various tech support channels on freenode (like #debian) and other
networks like moznet.

I also enjoy a smallish but active discussion channel which I won't name here
for fear of it being HN'd.

------
scaryclam
Absolutely. Every time I want to learn about a new tech or have questions
about an open source project, my first port of call is freenode. I've had some
excellent help and discussions, even in the last couple of months.

------
emilfihlman
Of course. I use it every day for keeping in touch with technically minded
communities and some talking channels. Irssi is my wagon, it runs on my server
in a screen and I use ssh to access it, both on desktop and mobile.

------
Improvotter
I search questions on Google/Stackoverflow, I post questions on IRC because I
do not want to put all of it out there and get berated by the SO community.
Though I still know that most IRC channels have public logs.

------
jfk13
Yes -- though my company is looking to move away from it sometime soon
(sadly?), so my use will decrease. It won't disappear entirely, at least for
now, as there are other uses outside the company's control.

------
Endy
Yes. I use IRC to chat, to roleplay, to interact with people and the like.
Basically, I both can't and won't use Discord (too much Google reliance - the
client program is in unheaded Chrome). So I use IRC.

------
RickJWagner
Yes, every work day.

I work remote for a great Open Source company. We've got people all around the
globe, IRC is the glue that holds everything together.

Some pockets of the company are trying Slack, etc. but IRC is still the
backbone.

------
m23khan
AWS IRC chat channel can be a God-send when you are stuck and need direction
pronto. The only caviat maybe that its best to hit the AWS IRC chat channel
during North American (especially EST) work hours.

------
samch93
Obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/1782/](https://xkcd.com/1782/)

------
carc1n0gen
Every single day. I hang out on #pocoo on freenode. It's the channel for the
Flask python framework and related libraries

I lurk and help out the people new to flask. There's new people all the time

------
jamestomasino
Yes, on freenode, irc.tildeverse.org, irc.sdf.org, and several others. I find
peer groups and support on my tools, languages, and hobbies. IRC is the best.
It's not going anywhere.

------
jeannekamikaze
What alternatives would you propose? If it is Slack and the other proprietary
abominations designed to take away your freedom, then the choice seems pretty
obvious to me.

------
oops
IRC was a pretty big part of my life. I remember when EFnet split to form
IRCnet like it was yesterday. I’m probably still connected in a detached
screen(1) session somewhere.

------
chaz6
Yes! It has been around a very long time and is robust and well understood,
and is not proprietary, and is decentralised. I hope it stays around for the
next few decades.

------
quickthrower2
I did to get some Haskell help about 4 years ago, and it was very good for
that. But that's mainly down to other humans, not something special about IRC
itself.

------
Myrmornis
I try it from time to time for asking questions on what I think will be
technical forums, with mixed results. (Yes, I know how to ask technical
questions...)

------
lacampbell
Yes, though I can't deny it's dying. If I had my way everyone would be on IRC,
but if everyone is on discord, then I guess I'll follow them.

------
Keyframe
Slack+Twitter seem to have replace my IRC alternate life.

------
hprotagonist
i have a linode box that runs irssi in a tmux session 24/7 and that’s all it’s
for.

i have learned more about python emacs sql and gentoo on irc than anywhere
else.

------
mixedmath
Yeah, I love IRC. I'm only on freenode now with any frequency, though. Maybe
I'm missing out on some other great servers? I'm unsure.

------
sbov
Some use IRC, some use discord. A friend wrote a bot so people in our IRC chat
can communicate with people in our discord chat (and vice versa).

------
pteraspidomorph
Freenode on occasion. I used it regularly for more than 20 years but nowadays
casual chichat moved to Discord. I'm keeping an eye on Matrix.

------
NuSkooler
Yes, lots of people. Discord has become popular, but not enough & there are
often bridge-bots running. I imagine Slack is in a similar boat.

~~~
ryeguy_24
I haven't gotten into Discord yet. Isn't it a pain that there are so many
Discord servers and you can't just have one server with all the channels (ala
Freenode)?

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
Not at all!

It is normal to be connected to multiple servers at once, and the UI makes it
easy to keep track of them.

As the other commenter said, it is much better to think of each server as a
channel. A Discord server is typically dedicated to a single topic or
organization. My old World of Warcraft guild has a Discord server. On that
server, you'll have separate channels for general chat, announcements, and
several voice channels for groups.

------
wink
Yes, daily. Access to a network of friends and people I can ask for advice and
provide advice in return.

Several channels for open source projects.

Sadly not for work anymore.

------
0898
A couple of years ago I logged into a channel on Dalnet I used to frequent
when I was 16 in 1998.

Some of the SAME people were there. Nearly 20 years later.

------
LukeB42
[https://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd](https://github.com/lukeb42/psyrcd)

------
thinkxl
Yes. I mostly hang out in ##frontend, #indieweb, and #whatwg.

The people I met in ##frontend were extremely helpful and made them good
friends.

------
eiro
yes because it's free, simple to extend, low bandwidth compliant. there are
some problems people still want to solve (see
[https://ircv3.net/](https://ircv3.net/) and
[https://irc.com/](https://irc.com/))

------
austhrow743
The torrenting community is on it. I was getting some help setting up software
on a seedbox there yesterday in fact.

------
caf
Yeah, still using IRC (mostly Efnet but I keep a weather eye on Freenode for a
project I maintain).

I think I just feel at home there.

------
stakhanov
I barely use it, so maybe people can correct me on this one if I've got it
wrong, but: It seems to me like it's now used almost exclusively for
communication around underworld/illegal stuff. I would definitely be quite
scared to hang around IRC not being anonymous (not talking about freenode
here, of course, which is where open source developer folk hang out).

------
shodan757
Absolutely. On Freenode, #rhel, ##electronics, #django, #mercurial, #mysql,
#python are all great.

------
xfitm3
All the time. We have an IRC server at work, but it's less popular than Slack
unfortunately.

------
dustfinger
I just discovered ##hackernews on freenode :-P Also, #startups is the official
hackernews chan.

------
valeg
Yes, I use IRC through a Matrix bridge in the Riot client. It just works,
provides persistence.

------
mindcrime
Yep. I'm on Freenode quite a bit. #ai, #agi, #startups, #machinelearning,
#trilug, etc.

------
jaequery
IRC needs to evolve to meet the standards of now. Which means, make it more
easily accessible, like easy as opening a website.

And two, I feel there should just be a single network. Either that or make it
easy to explore other networks. The kids these days are not going to bother
understanding or picking and choosing which network to go.

It's got to be super simple.

~~~
contradictioned
I think, there's a web client for every major IRC network. Just enter a
nickname and start chatting.

------
fsloth
Yes.

I use it to talk to friends. We've been at it for decades and see no reason to
stop. Old habits.

------
DarmokJalad1701
Yup. It's still the best place to find ebooks when sailing the high seas.

------
rurban
Stopped 4 years ago. I only come back for the yearly CCC conference channels.

------
jacobush
I use it with a bunch of friends in a private channel since 20 years back.

------
orpheline
I wish I could; it's blocked at work, for fear of bots...

------
ionwake
I use IRSSI in my shell whenever I have a tech question

------
ori_b
Yes. Most of my contact with friends is through IRC.

------
point78
Every single day.... it's unbeatable imo

------
kishansagathiya
IPFS and it's sister projects use it.

------
ronsor
Yep. I run a server on a small IRC network.

------
megous
I control my bots via private IRC server.

------
Zash
Connecting to IRC via Biboumi from XMPP

------
cheez0r
Every day, still keeping EFNet alive.

------
freeopinion
<3 IRC, contemplating Discord

------
edsiper2
Yes

------
ThomPete
yes there is actually a #startups on freenode.

------
erik_p
/me nope ;)

------
hestefisk
Yes every day.

------
oaf357
Red Hat does.

------
NorthCon_de
We use IRC as a central way of communication for our LAN parties, starting in
1998 and spanning at least eight directly connected party series/"brands" over
all those years.

The number of attendees ranges from about 100 up to 3,500+ (German record,
2005, still holds), including roughly two dozen parties with 1,000 to 2,500
attendees.

On the orga side, we use it daily for internal discussion and notifications.
Events from our own LAN party platform's [1] party web sites (accounts,
orders, forum posts, etc.), internal forums, GitLab (issues, CI build
results), and social media (followers, mentions) are announced there – using a
combination of web hooks, RSS, Zapier, and custom tools ([2], [3]).

These days we use IRC in tandem with a self-hosted Mattermost [4] instance, a
bot to bridge between both, and the option to connect to Mattermost with an
IRC client. A few things like embedded images get lost on the way, though.

On the parties itself, we run a local IRC server. There is a main party
channel with auto-join. Organizers are on IRC both for internal collaboration
and monitoring (e.g. [5]) as well as user support.

Tournament players are required to be present in the respective IRC channels
for the tournaments they participate in.

Events from the local party intranet [1] (news posts, forum posts, tournament
updates) are announced on IRC as well.

A modified version of The Lounge [6] is provided as a simple, web-based
alternative as part of our intranet for everyone not used to, or too fond of,
a "classic" IRC client.

Last but not least, there's #quiz, running the same MoxQuizz [7] version for
ages with questions from the mid-2000s.

That said, our guests usually provide multiple locally public TeamSpeak
servers for voice communication.

So while we added some more modern tools and services to the mix (for example
a Telegram channel for announcements, reminders and other tiny bits of
information), and are considering others (for example Discord, but dependence
on Internet connectivity and third-party terms are a massive downside for us),
both IRC and LAN parties are totally not dead for us.

[1] [https://github.com/byceps/byceps](https://github.com/byceps/byceps) [2]
[https://github.com/homeworkprod/weitersager](https://github.com/homeworkprod/weitersager)
[3]
[https://github.com/homeworkprod/gewebehaken](https://github.com/homeworkprod/gewebehaken)
[4] [https://mattermost.com/](https://mattermost.com/) [5]
[https://github.com/homeworkprod/syslog2irc](https://github.com/homeworkprod/syslog2irc)
[6] [https://thelounge.chat/](https://thelounge.chat/) [7]
[http://moxquizz.de/](http://moxquizz.de/)

------
carterschonwald
yes, i use it a lot!

------
mself
Yes, it’s called Skack now.

------
tomerbd
slack

------
nroah
I do. Much better than the alternatives, especially if you value your privacy
and being able to use whatever client you want.

~~~
ryeguy_24
What client do you use? Haven't found a good one for Mac.

~~~
spapas82
I am behind a firewall at work so I use web clients. I used to use
[https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/](https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/) but now
I've moved to [https://www.irccloud.com/](https://www.irccloud.com/) (the free
version).

