Out of curiosity, how many hackernews folks still IRC? I do, and IRC periodically gets in the news (usually through chatlogs posted from hackers, LulzSec, etc.), but what do y'all use?
I use IRC for just about everything. I run ZNC (1) on my server to maintain a 24/7 presence on multiple IRC networks, and use a combination of Irssi in a screen session and AndChat on my Android devices to connect to ZNC. I also wrote a ZNC module to send highlight and pm notifications to my phone using Notifo (1), and even chat over AIM and Google Talk through my IRC client using Bitlbee (1). Its a somewhat complicated setup, but makes me really happy and does exactly what I want it to do.
I have never been able to "get" IRC. I've tried to like it a number of times, but it always ends up as nothing but a distraction.
My experience: start a client, join a channel, and watch it go. Meanwhile, try to get work done. I'm either watching IRC in case something interesting goes by (and then not working), or I'm working and then miss whatever was interesting on IRC. Or I try to do both and accomplish neither.
To me, IRC feels exactly like those twitter update widgets that people put on their blogs. I usually end up opening a terminal window and putting it over the widget, otherwise it distracts me like a "look at me!" advertisement.
I get much better value and results from googling; someone has always had whatever problem I'm trying to solve, and if I can't figure it out on my own, I can usually find a thread where someone else has.
I'm not complaining, and I'm not saying IRC has no value (to others). I sometimes wonder if I'm doing it wrong, but I think IRC, among many other things, is just not for me.
In certain help channels, for complicated questions, you would be amazed with the quality of the responses you get from people just hanging out in channel. Being able to paste code and work with someone in real time to troubleshoot bugs has saved my bacon probably hundreds of times by now. Great examples of this are #jquery, #postgresql and #perl on freenode.
Yeah, twitter is actually one of the closest things to IRC imho. The key of enjoying it is to learn enjoy the moment. Keep it minimized in the background, or on a other desktop or something, and check it out occasionally to see if there is anything interesting going on at the moment. If not, then proceed doing whatever.
Regular IRC user here. I think IRC is the communication technologies I use the most, after that there's email, then identica/twitter, and then IM and facebook.
I connect to IRC using ERC in an Emacs daemon running on my server. This way I don't need screen (I use it for other purpose thought), I just ssh and fireup an emacsclient.
I'm on irc since 1994 or 1995. Currently running one irssi session under screen 24/7 on a bought shell account as well as Bitlbee so that I can access Facebook and Gmail chat inside irc, too. That means I don't have to leave irc or ever setup anything else to access my messages. Bitlbee is absolutely golden.
Generally, I'd say irc is much more productive than the now-more-typical IM solutions or the webchats of FB/Gmail.
First, it doesn't interrupt me: I'll have it running in one of the tabs in one of my terminal windows. My irc never comes to check on me, I'll go check on irc but only when I want to.
Second, it's persistent: I'm online all the time, I get logs of whatever happens or whoever calls me during my absence, and I can easily review them when I'm back online. Yet I don't need anything but a mere ssh client to access all my messaging.
Third, irc can help me keep it touch with my personal friends but it can keep me in touch with healthy communities as well. Never seen an online chat "room" or IM chat window that had a collective soul as many old irc channels do. I'm a frequent on a few channels, as time permits. I mostly just help (relative) newbies with programming problems these days.
- irc.gimp.net (gnome guy)
- irc.freenode.net (lots of things)
- irc.somedomainIadminstrate.de (private irc server, low traffic, for a web browser game)
What is your replacement?
Mails? Obviously not 'realtime'. I like mailing lists, but they are the 'chess by mail' vs. 'blitz chess' variant and fight lots of problems if you just want to have a talk with multiple people, now.
IM? In my private world every IM network sucks. I tend to like XMPP, but - it's just not useful enough. Even if GTalk and Facebook use it, unless federation works well I won't use it for much. Don't get me started on Skype or somesuch nonsense.. This would be my favorite choice, given a better world.
Web chat? There are lots of neat web applications. Which, somehow, seem to reinvent IRC. The better they are (for me), the more IRC alike they seem to be. Where's the point?
A matter of practicality. Each instance is joined to a couple of channels.
I could join them all, but the point is that I tend to be in 8 +/-2 channels in both gimp.net and freenode.org. Plus a couple in the private network. Switching between more than 10 channels in irssi is too much of a hassle for me, more than 20 channels is unpractical.
Plus, this way I can label the screen windows (Freenode, Programming) or (GIMP, Gnome development) and have a better way to context switch between completely disconnected things.
I keep irssi connected to Freenode 24/7 in screen on a server, and I'm in channels for things like MongoDB, Rails, Git, EventMachine, etc. It's nice to turn to when I run into a wall while developing something.
I've been on IRC since the early '90s. Its greatest value for me is in giving and getting immediate help on technical issues, which is why I mostly hang out on freenode these days.
As far as non-technical subject go, it's been hard for me to find quality conversation on IRC, though it does happen once in a blue moon. Still, sometimes it's nice to just chat about whatever with people you've known for a while, even if it is usually pretty superficial.
As someone who uses and develops open source software, communication via IRC (especially the Freenode network) is an important element of my day-to-day routine.
I'm very happy running weechat in tmux, on a Linux VPS hosted by Rackspace.
I can then connect via ssh to that VPS and tmux/weechat session from multiple machines. For about 2 years I used irssi, but I dumped it for weechat.
I am an avid IRC user, mostly to keep in touch with friends from school, but also for technical, hanging out on various different channels to get help before turning to StackOverflow.
rcirc mode for emacs is all I use now. Makes it extremely handy to copy paste code to chat or vice versa using scpaste. Plus rcirc integrated with Bitlbee and libnotify to give me desktop notifications when someone says my name (or other configurable keywords). Does everything I need with aplomb while staying out of my way.
I'm rather fond of the fork of it named "Textual". It's $5 in the App Store, but he's got public source and you can build it yourself. Very clean, very nice.
It supports a more traditional IRC UI, where you can say "yes" on your current channel just by typing "yes" and hitting return, but its output is not formatted nicely. It's about half as much code.
I had started doing something similar, but in C, and with no daemons or additional sockets (ie. the program outputs what happens on the channels on stdout, and says what arrives on stdin). It works fine enough for me to use it on trusted channels to write easy bots, show off some programs or whatever, but it's not finished, clean, robust or secure.
