Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IRC turns thirty

oulu.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 232 posts

Re: IRC turns thirty

#101

Post by asdojasdosadsa »

IRC brings back some memories. I haven't personally used IRC in a few years directly, but I can remember how when I started university, every freshman "had" to login to IRC through SSH and screen :-). That's where the course channels were sitting and you could get help, either if you didn't want to ask face to face, go to school or just needed to ask something. There were other channels too, some where you were invited and had small social groups you chatted with daily.

Nowadays, most of the communication has migrated to Telegram from IRC.

EDIT: If one was to start using IRC, I guess there isn't a channel or a server where most or some of the people using also Hacker News go?

Re: IRC turns thirty

#102

Post by schindlabua »

I always envy the guy who registered the nick "e" on freenode. He must be ancient, one of the first users since NickServ came into being, and I imagine him as this grey-bearded programmer wizard who speaks in x86 assembly. He hangs around in ##C and I've seen him speak occasionally I think.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#103

Post by dakom »

IRC was where I learned to program in the late 90's. Both through instruction on channels like #C, and also literally implementing the RFC's - building both bots and servers.

It was a rush building "bot/server" combos like Nickserv... felt like superpowers and you could do all kinds of things through spoofing names and whatnot.

(I mean it was pointless since the only servers I could pair with were other empty ones with one or two people... but still - it was fun!)

I guess at some point my trajectory just.. changed - moving from that world to less heady stuff like Flash and so on... but the nostalgia is strong and I feel very lucky to have gotten my start in tech that way.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#104

Post by ailideex »

subhro wrote: post #3

I am invariably going to see in the world of Slack, "IRC, why don't you die already". No, IRC is not going to die. FreeNode is alive and well. And while you busy slamming and wishing death of IRC, just check the memory usage of your Slack client.

I like slack quite a bit, but it's not designed to be a replacement for general use case of IRC - it focuses on specific use cases and can be manhandled into other use cases with a lot of pain towards the users.

matrix.org/riot.im seems like a more sensible alternative to IRC - but their systems are overloaded and slow - multi second latency is the norm.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#105

Post by pingec »

asdojasdosadsa wrote: post #101

IRC brings back some memories. I haven't personally used IRC in a few years directly, but I can remember how when I started university, every freshman "had" to login to IRC through SSH and screen :-). That's where the course channels were sitting and you could get help, either if you didn't want to ask face to face, go to school or just needed to ask something. There were other channels too, some where you were invit…

Perhaps #hackernews and #startups on freenode?

Re: IRC turns thirty

#106

Post by apeacox »

sshine wrote: post #68
sbjs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it before and it's not as easy as it sounds. There is no one spec, it's a handful of RFCs and other ad hoc extensions that are barely documented anywhere. I think there's at least a dozen different documents you have to refer to.

For most of the client protocol, it's just RFC 1459 and RFC 2812. Then there's CTCP, DCC, server-to-server protocols and the 005 numeric. I'm not sure you need any of these for communicating via telnet or writing a small bot that will answer back.

Yes, you can definitely connect manually through telnet (I did it back in the old days). The only problem is it will not stay connected too much, because you should also reply to server's PINGs at regular time intervals otherwise you'll get disconnected.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#107

Post by josteink »

And the IRC network I help run must have turned 15 by now.

It’s not filled to the brim with thousands and thousands of users. It’s not monetizable.

But instead we have a nice, small community where we can hang out, be ourselves and do whatever we like without having to adhere some other company’s “community standards”.

It’s how I like the internet to be, and I don’t care one bit if it’s old-fashioned.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#108

Post by Doxin »

pingec wrote: post #105
asdojasdosadsa wrote: post #101

IRC brings back some memories. I haven't personally used IRC in a few years directly, but I can remember how when I started university, every freshman "had" to login to IRC through SSH and screen :-). That's where the course channels were sitting and you could get help, either if you didn't want to ask face to face, go to school or just needed to ask something. There were other channels too, some where you were invit…

Perhaps #hackernews and #startups on freenode?

Another good starting point is #xkcd. it is a large channel with a lot of tech-ish and math-y people.

EDIT: Note that channel discovery on IRC is largely a word-of-mouth thing so don't be shy to ask people for channel recommendations on irc. Most programming language have a dedicated channel, e.g. #D or #python or whatnot.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#109

Post by bkircher »

xPaw wrote: post #88
bkircher wrote: post #79

Love IRC. But what client should I use on my telephone?

You can use a self hosted client like The Lounge which maintains IRC connections on your own server, and then you can view the client via a web browser (so it looks great on a phone, and you can get web push notifications) It basically acts like any other chat client (e.g. works on multiple devices at the same time) https://thelounge.chat https://demo.thelounge.chat

Sure. However simplicity is quite important when you choose IRC as company chat solution and you want not only your geeky devs to join but also not–so–geeky people like the guy from marketing and the friendly folks from the front–desk.

Re: IRC turns thirty

#110

Post by pingec »

ryanisnan wrote: post #36
superkuh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that those communities chose to use Slack. And now they're locked in to a proprietary protocol controlled by a single company with perverse incentives for censorship. In prior years those communities would've chosen IRC. But nowdays everything has to be pretty hand hold your hand for you (ie, host your images, assume you know nothing of how to participate on the 'net by yourself). It is a zero-sum game…

Slack is perfect for organizations, whereas IRC is not. And no, we're not locked into anything.

I wish there was a way to ignore certain users / bots, this is such a pain for me, it makes slack too spammy and noisy for me so I only ever read private messages.
Post reply on HN