
Survival Guide:IRC - googletron
http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/6176918750/survival-guide-irc-1
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chipsy
How to learn things quickly, without trying:

1\. Find a large number of technical IRC channels. 2\. Idle in all of them.

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nik_0_0
I've used specific IRC channels in the past, for downloads or manga, what are
some good 'technical IRC channels'?

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alextp
You can look for #<programming language> or #<library> on freenode, for
example.

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paulgerhardt
This post is too closely plagiarized from Eric Raymond's "How to Ask Questions
the Smart Way". <http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

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googletron
The format of the idiocy is showcased in the same way, and general idea is the
same, humility. I wouldn't go as far as to say it was plagiarized though.
Thanks for the constructive input though :)

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peterwwillis
Some similarly useful tips in How To Report Bugs Effectively also apply to IRC
<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html>

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googletron
nice find peter!

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bitops
Nice writeup. Sometimes I feel like there should be a canonical reference for
novice programmers with links to all this stuff.

E.g. Want to know what Netiquette is? Read this RFC. Curious about HTTP?
Here's the RFC and some other good materials.

I think there are many "perma threads" that all beginners eventually end up
asking, it would cool if they were all easily accessible from one place.

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googletron
I might just do that. <https://github.com/myusuf3/Programmers-Survival-Guide>

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j45
Where was this guide in 1993?

So many bot wars.. could have been avoided.

It's nice to see it though in IRC terms, though. The point about being able to
post, and then wait for an answer is important. Sometimes we want a quick
answer and can't get it on IRC. Each channel has it's own activity level and
culture and it's important to know how different channels work.

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michaelbuckbee
What's interesting to me is the extent to which IRC support and discussion of
technical (programming) topics has been taken over by StackOverflow.

This is admittedly anecdotal, but I often see people refer questioners to SO
entries as the answer to something and I've had more success getting answers
to things by posting a SO question and then throwing the URL for that into an
IRC channel than trying to establish everything in the channel itself.

Maybe SO is just acting like a pastie.org that you can also get answers to.

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johnpaulett
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619721>

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d0mine
<http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml>

<http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml>

to sum up: _be nice_

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rogerclark
this guide isn't even necessary in 2012. people on irc aren't even mean to new
people anymore. everyone is boring and nice

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baby
wow a survival guide about something that's been around here for ages. Also a
cheap survival guide, I've seen better resources about IRC... This is the kind
of blog post that lands on the frontpage of HN thanks to I don't know what
miracle.

Also for developers, tendency is to leave IRC. See the new chat system of
metastack.

As for the video of numb3rs. Who haven't seen that also...

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bitops
Though I know it's bad policy to feed the trolls...I hadn't seen the numbers
video. And I enjoyed it.

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baby
Oh yeah I'm a troll now. I've been using IRC since 2001... Feels also like HN
shouldn't be a place to post videos like the numb3rs' one, also I enjoy it on
reddit.

