IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was born at the Department of Information Processing Science of the University of Oulu 30 years ago. Jarkko Oikarinen developed the internet chat system back in 1988 in addition to his summer job. Today, people are still using IRC.
I used to spend a lot of time on IRC, and a good IRC client was an absolute must for any aspiring operating system back in the early 2000s. I haven’t used IRC in years – maybe in a decade – but it’s good to see this technology still going strong.
I can’t remember when the last time I was on though. These days, I’m a certified Reddit junkie
Edited 2018-08-24 19:58 UTC
Well, IRC in general is not anymore like the 90s, but Freenode, OFTC and other IRC networks are still very healthy.
There are a lot of open source projects with their own channels, plenty of nice people ready to help you.
that was the absolute best, it took about 3 to 4 days to download windows 98!!! straight, that meant getting all the rars. From different xdcc bots at different channels. Because you had to cue them up !list.
Then you had things like Mafia script, a prepackaged customized script with Mirc.
I had dsl before anyone else, fooled the telco saying it was a business. The installer didnt care, he was just like. O.K., nice business.
Not one person had a chance against the floods. Then there were netsplits…
That was probably a lot of peoples entry into scripting!
Who didn’t get slapped by a smelly trout!!
I remember the Mafia script version of mIRC 🙂 Also, back in the days, irc trolls were called “Lamers”.
Home of “Lol”.
The home of LOL? USENET apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOL
I don’t understand tech people not using Freenode and OFTC
Some of the brightest and most knowledgeable people I know use IRC exclusively as their “social platform” (which is what it really is)
When I need to solve a hard problem and need help, I turn to IRC, and it never disappoints.
Edited 2018-08-25 18:17 UTC
Use BitlBee to connect with IM networks via your favourite IRC client!
https://www.bitlbee.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitlBee
And eh, time flies – IRC creator Jarkko Oikarinenis is probably over 50 now… :/