Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#131

Post by ionrock » Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 8:29 AM UTC

Ixiaus wrote: post #120

jasonkester wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you actually keep a chat window open all day long? Isn't that ridiculously distracting? I check my email twice a day, and HN the same. Anything else that could potentially distract me from what I'm doing gets turned off. I couldn't imagine giving random strangers the ability to intrude into my train of thought whenever they wanted.

I run ERC in Emacs - background buffers - all day long.

I wanted to second this. I do the same thing. We use IRC at my company and we all work remotely. Having IRC in my editor makes things much simpler since I can easily copy/paste code, visit links and generally stay in one environment all day.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#132

Post by joeyh » Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 12:46 PM UTC

Another often overlooked use for IRC is as a side channel during events. In conferences, we'll all be in a room, on IRC commenting on talks. During the BP oil spill, a channel (#theoildrum) had 500+ people, including some with oilfield experience, discussing the live ROV feeds, as well as scanning to find lots of ROV feeds that were not visible to the general public.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#133

Post by joelesler » Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 2:13 PM UTC

Hell yeah. All day every day.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#134

Post by joelesler » Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 2:14 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #12

jbooth wrote: post #4

Whatever OSS projects you use have channels on freenode. Keep those open all day and lurk, you'll be amazed how much you learn from osmosis. If someone comes by with an easy question, answer it and you'll have social karma to get help from others when you need it.

You mean you actually keep a chat window open all day long? Isn't that ridiculously distracting? I check my email twice a day, and HN the same. Anything else that could potentially distract me from what I'm doing gets turned off. I couldn't imagine giving random strangers the ability to intrude into my train of thought whenever they wanted.

You apparently have ADD. You should seek help. There is a difference in preventing distraction and people "intruding" your thought process. I shut a lot of things off (preventing distraction) as well during the day (including Mail at times), however, IRC doesn't "intrude" in my daily work, it just sits there, open, and I check it when I can, participate in a conversation, and move on.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#135

Post by joeycfan » Sun, Aug 01, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

IRC: Where men are men, where women are men, and where 13 year old girls looking for someone to talk to are FBI agents....

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#136

Post by akulbe » Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 2:39 PM UTC

IRC is one of the best ways to communicate. There's a lot to learn, and a lot to be taught.

Sometimes the best experience can be had by just reading what other people write.

For example... Erica Sadun is in #iphonedev and #ipaddev on Freenode. Know who she is? :)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#137

Post by geoffpado » Mon, Aug 09, 2010, 11:27 AM UTC

Sukotto wrote: post #123

mitjak wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong link?

yes. I meant to post the one about the Rooms IRC client for iPhone getting approved for the AppStore then getting pulled minutes later. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560753 Ironic, and possible relevant. Personally I do not use IRC. My work blocks it unless I want to court a reprimand by finding those few servers with non-standard port numbers. At home, I'm too busy with wife and kids, and whatnot to spend any…

Uh, there's still Colloquy (http://colloquy.mobi), a port of the most-popular Mac client to iPhone. So it's not like Apple has banned IRC in general.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone still use IRC?

#138

Post by kentnl » Sun, Aug 22, 2010, 9:11 AM UTC

DTrejo wrote: post #81

BJakopovic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how many are active? IRC is usually full of many decent sized rooms with limited chat and mostly inactive users

I always say hello when I join the channel and someone usually says hi back. This is especially good when there's only a few people talking, as fewer people => more interesting conversations (usually).

Generally, when somebody says "Hi", my reaction is "Oh dear, here comes the dumb question" and I cringe.

9/10 Times I'm right.

Generally I tend to /join and then just sit there for a while to discover the norms and protocols of the channel before speaking, unless I have a specific question/problem.

If I have a specific question/problem then "Just ask" is the best approach, but sadly, 9/10 times I end up fixing the problem myself, and get roped in to help solve 10 other peoples problems while I'm there!.

There's a rare occasion when you'll /join a channel and they'll greet you, but thats part of the 'norms and protocols of the channel' thing, and its usually a hallmark of a small channel, because having 500 users who come and go, if every one said 'hi' , or we greeted each and every one, $topic would never get discussed, and we'd be a 24/7 meet-and-greet channel!