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IRC is dead, long live IRC

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Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#111

Post by pnathan »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #23

IRC died for the same reason Usenet died: some old authoritative farts thumping on some ancient, bizarre rules they set during their youth, some kind of "trve" tech Islam, stopping any kind of progress and scaring away new blood. They could enforce that kind of bizarro rules during the time IRC and Usenet were the only game in town, but everybody sane jumped off the moment remotely usable alternatives (anything web b…

Strange, I thought I was using a very active set of channels this last weekend on freenode....

Had no clue IRC had died.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#112

Post by adrr »

chipsy wrote: post #59
chadillac83 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is much smaller than Google but still rather large and almost 100% IT focused. We jokingly setup an internal VPN accessible IRC server a couple years ago to share links and just have a development/sysadmin chat room. As we started using it more we started setting up specific channels for departments like #dev, #ops, #random, #dba. Now we use it for quick communications between departments, trading links, s…

I've determined independently that a IRC server fills a sweet spot in the collaborative toolset. A basic IM system isn't good enough because it doesn't have channels, it doesn't give you a shared history. Email is heavy and induces people to spend too much time per message. Sometimes it's good to have a light/noisy feed, and IRC is just fine for that job.

Checkout HipChat. Like IRC and has a desktop and web client. They also have API which you can use to post messages to channels from external sources. We have our Capistrano/Ant scripts post their status to our "Deployment" channel. Currently working on a bot that hooks into Jenkins so we can build via our "development" channel.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#113

Post by falcolas »

I have to go against the grain of my colleagues here. Our company uses IRC, and I hate it. Our small group, on the other hand, uses primairly Skype, and it works well for us.

IRC fails for me for a few reasons. First, I have to set up a SSH tunnel to use it. It's inconvenient, doesn't always start & restart automatically, but it's required because we want our communications to be private, and we're a distributed company.

Second, I have to set up special configs just to be alerted when my name is brought up. I can't keep up with IRC and actually get any work done, so I have to figure out my current program's implementation of an address book/macros/whatever in order to just be alerted when someone's trying to get my attention. It's also another venue I have to go into and manually mark myself as AFK (something most modern communication programs handle automatically).

Third, its interface is arcane. I never got into IRC when I was younger (and it was in its heyday), and so I don't have the plethora of commands at my fingertips when I want to get something done. Opme? Couldn't tell you how to do that, sorry. I'm sure I could learn, but for something so niche (even within our company), it's not worth the time.

Finally, there are just better programs out there for communicating amongst small (and not so small) groups, that don't require you to idle in a chatroom to ensure you don't loose anything.

[EDIT] As an addendum, there's a lot of mention of IRCs utility in open source. I can't count the number of times I've downloaded software and joined an open source chat with dozens of people in it, just to find out that everyone's idling, and the chances of getting a (useful) response before I could look through the code myself are tiny.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#114

Post by DigitalJack »

falcolas wrote: post #113

I have to go against the grain of my colleagues here. Our company uses IRC, and I hate it. Our small group, on the other hand, uses primairly Skype, and it works well for us. IRC fails for me for a few reasons. First, I have to set up a SSH tunnel to use it. It's inconvenient, doesn't always start & restart automatically, but it's required because we want our communications to be private, and we're a distributed comp…

Regarding your addendum, I too have joined a channel to find everyone idling. Turns out, they get an alert when someone writes something, and all you have to do is ask your question. Almost invariably someone will pipe up.

Think of them as being "on call."

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#115

Post by Domenic_S »

chipsy wrote: post #59
chadillac83 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is much smaller than Google but still rather large and almost 100% IT focused. We jokingly setup an internal VPN accessible IRC server a couple years ago to share links and just have a development/sysadmin chat room. As we started using it more we started setting up specific channels for departments like #dev, #ops, #random, #dba. Now we use it for quick communications between departments, trading links, s…

I've determined independently that a IRC server fills a sweet spot in the collaborative toolset. A basic IM system isn't good enough because it doesn't have channels, it doesn't give you a shared history. Email is heavy and induces people to spend too much time per message. Sometimes it's good to have a light/noisy feed, and IRC is just fine for that job.

> A basic IM system isn't good enough because it doesn't have channels, it doesn't give you a shared history.

Your shared history vanishes when you're off the network though. Skype has channels, and preserves history, syncing your "rooms" when you log back in.

If it were as easy to pipe machine data (syslog, notices, tweets?) into Skype as it is to pipe it into IRC, it'd be perfect.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#116

Post by bifrost »

I use IRC every day, its basically one of the most useful communication mediums for me. IRC will never die, but people will always try to change it and fail; Its best as a simple communications medium.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#117

Post by nso »

Karunamon wrote: post #105
nso wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try getting them onboard with www.hipchat.com. Even tho I still use IRC at home we use hipchat at work, and it works pretty well. The ability to easily send screengrabs and similar stuff to other users is pretty handy.

Unfortunately Hipchat won't work for my day job because the higher ups have this thing against hosted services (and given the security climate nowadays I can't entirely blame them). Any idea of something like Hipchat but hostable internally?

Let them know you'd like a self-hosted version: https://www.hipchat.com/firewall

This one looks like a carbon copy of hipchat, but I have no experience with it: http://kikuchat.com/

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#118

Post by tomrod »

jlgreco wrote: post #94
Filligree wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

##C on freenode?

##c is perhaps the most infamously caustic active channel on any IRC network today. Fun, if that's what you are into.

I figured it was just one guy who is so awful. It's more than one person?

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#119

Post by jff »

DigitalJack wrote: post #114
falcolas wrote: post #113

I have to go against the grain of my colleagues here. Our company uses IRC, and I hate it. Our small group, on the other hand, uses primairly Skype, and it works well for us. IRC fails for me for a few reasons. First, I have to set up a SSH tunnel to use it. It's inconvenient, doesn't always start & restart automatically, but it's required because we want our communications to be private, and we're a distributed comp…

Regarding your addendum, I too have joined a channel to find everyone idling. Turns out, they get an alert when someone writes something, and all you have to do is ask your question. Almost invariably someone will pipe up. Think of them as being "on call."

They'll pipe up if the question is something like "What's the flag to make ls display in color?". IRCers are generally pretty quiet if you ask something actually technical or involving the code, or they'll just offer up a lot of speculation and irrelevant links. My theory is that the real project leaders and developers use mailing lists because they need to get work done, not watch IRC.

Re: IRC is dead, long live IRC

#120

Post by falcolas »

DigitalJack wrote: post #114
falcolas wrote: post #113

I have to go against the grain of my colleagues here. Our company uses IRC, and I hate it. Our small group, on the other hand, uses primairly Skype, and it works well for us. IRC fails for me for a few reasons. First, I have to set up a SSH tunnel to use it. It's inconvenient, doesn't always start & restart automatically, but it's required because we want our communications to be private, and we're a distributed comp…

Regarding your addendum, I too have joined a channel to find everyone idling. Turns out, they get an alert when someone writes something, and all you have to do is ask your question. Almost invariably someone will pipe up. Think of them as being "on call."

That's exactly what I did (I was aware enough of IRC ettiquite that people idle in the rooms but may come back sometime later & answer): ask a question and usually answer my own question and quit without a response some 4 hours later.
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