I was exploring an obscure Linux distro when I noticed they're contact page had an IRC client. You can connect to the IRC via Matrix, but the people there prefer pure IRC.
My question is do other programmers use IRC? Also why?
Mostly momentum.
It works.
Knowledgeable people are using it.
I don't and pretty much refuse to unless it goes through matrix. It's archaic, has cryptic commands, and serves only the purpose of stroking ego + gatekeeping.
Same as mailinglists. It might take another 10 years for both to finally die.
Totally agree. IRC and Mailing lists used to be the best option for platform agnostic open source communities, but when better options exist it’s now used out of stubbornness. Even if not intentional, use of these systems with their own cliques and etiquettes now acts mostly as gatekeeping through obscurity and are off putting to outsiders who may well be prevented from participating.
IRC is nice, but recently started chatting on XMPP, and I'm enjoying it just as much.
At this point, familiarity and nostalgia. In the heyday of IRC it was a good way to get help (or flamed) for questions that couldn't be found anywhere else online. As a former IRC user I've never used matrix and have only heard of it on social media like lemmy.
As a programmer I like IRC because it has a simple protocol. Writing a basic irc bot is pretty easy if your standard library supports sockets and string manipulation. I was doing this sort of thing in the late '00s but things have changed a lot in 15 years.
I’ve still got a fancy IRC setup with a bouncer and whatnot.
These days discord has pretty much taken over its niche though, and it’s what I’m on 99% of the time outside of chatting with the community for a half-dead 20 year old game. But, not long ago in my lifetime IRC was 100% the way to go for this sort of text chat, and a lot of that still exists. And well, it’s absolutely dead simple and resilient as a protocol.
