The freenode subreddit on reddit has less than 200 subscribers. Imagine if every programmer knew about freenode. We would have such a rich exchange of ideas, and probably better open source software.
Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#2Nope.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#3IRC is not a great place for a rich exchange of ideas. I did learn a bunch on it -- but I could have done so elsewhere.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#4Freenode has orders more than 200 users online, yet alone registered users.
I imagine the crowd that tend to use instant messaging don't see the same appeal with threaded message boards. Different medium, for better or worse.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#5I used to use it for Clojure(Script) but it seems to have just stopped working. I put in a nick and channel and prove I'm not a bot, but the start button doesn't work, no explanation. I'm sure it would take less time than even typing this up to figure out the cause, but there are other means of access to the Clojure community.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#6Been trying to get back into IRC recently. Because of nostalgia. Like some others said, and I am realizing, it is not a very good place to exchange ideas or even ask about problems. Chat is not good for these things. Forums, mailing list, StackOverflow etc., even Twitter is much better, because everyone have time to craft and edit their messages, and think things through. It is usually archived and searchable. In chat, the message is easily lost or the conversation has carried on to another topic before you are able to respond a long message, like this one.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#7IRC is frustrating, Freenode prevents anonymity (blocks Tor users unless they auth over clearnet first, as an example), graphical IRC clients are rarely any good, Freenode isn't even the best network (Rizon), Freenode is owned by a sketchy company (London Trust Media/Private Internet Access/the malware distributor that bought PIA a few weeks ago), some more stuff that I'd have to fill the character limit to mention.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#8A lot of people do know about freenode though. It's a very large network. :-)
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#9Been trying to get back into IRC recently. Because of nostalgia. Like some others said, and I am realizing, it is not a very good place to exchange ideas or even ask about problems. Chat is not good for these things. Forums, mailing list, StackOverflow etc., even Twitter is much better, because everyone have time to craft and edit their messages, and think things through. It is usually archived and searchable. In cha…
It's really good for troubleshooting though. Once people start helping you it's a very powerful tool. It also helps immensely wrt absorbing the culture around a particular language or system.
Often a group of people will have an IRC channel, a website, multiple blogs, servers, etc. It's one tool in a spectrum of tools.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't more people know about Freenode?
#10In my experience asking questions on irc is pretty much useless. A lot of times you just get try hard's they don't even understand what you are trying to do that are determined they know more than you about what you are doing. It's just frustrating. If I got a question I typically just sit on it for a day two, and figure it out or ask on a forum. As far as chat, I much prefer something like rocketchat/slack/mattermost because of the embedded data that comes with it. A friend posts a funny YouTube video I just click play I don't have to load open a browser and navigate to the link. When someone posts a link you get meta data with the link so you can decide if you want to click it or not. It's more streamlined that way IMO. IRC could easily integrate this stuff but development of the standard hasn't really progressed that I have seen.