I'd just like to point out that this argument ("if <x> were so great, everyone would already use/do <x>") is just a slightly different form of the ancient appeal to popularity argument and is entirely fallacious.

I still use Slack for internal use, and for our students.

What makes Slack (and its ilk, though the title of the post makes a bias against Slack clear) so great is that it's simple, easy, full-featured and has a low barrier to entry to the non-HN crowd that is being asked, in many cases, to use it.

I can promise you, out of experience and out of just plain statistics, that Slack and IRC have different audiences, and those audiences will not likely prefer the other.

Also, I'd guess that IRC is actually the more popular choice. But the majority of the IRC using audience is too busy getting work done in IRC to comment on an HN post.

Freenode isn't the only network out there =)

No one denies IRC's continued popularity as a protocol for broadcasting text over a network. Slack itself uses it. But it's dying out as measured by the number of people who say to their colleagues e.g. "get on IRC, I have something to tell you."

From the parent post I replied to, "IRC's user base is declining". Every single person watching a Twitch stream is an IRC user, whether they know it or not.

How do you determine the popularity of something? How many people use it.

Android is extremely popular. Do most of the folks realize they're using an Android phone? Nope.

Does it mean Android isn't popular? Nope.

If you don't have a similar understanding, we'll have to agree to disagree.

> The point is more that it's dying out as measured by people who say to their colleagues e.g. "jump on IRC, I've got something to tell you."

Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up somewhere to get access to a random Slack channel/community instead of using IRC, where I also coincidentally wouldn't need any of Slack's features.

> Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up somewhere to get access to a random Slack channel/community instead of using IRC, where I also coincidentally wouldn't need any of Slack's features.

No, what I meant was, people no longer think of IRC as the tool to use to talk about projects and communities. They used to. That was its primary use case. That use case is shrinking, so IRC is becoming less popular.

> How do you determine the popularity of something? How many people use it. Android is extremely popular. Do most of the folks realize they're using an Android phone? Nope.

This isn't quite true, is it? Most Android users seem to know they're using Android. I could be wrong.

> No, what I meant was, people no longer think of IRC as the tool to use to talk about projects and communities. They used to. That was its primary use case. That use case is shrinking, so IRC is becoming less popular.

There's plenty of other avenues to use these days, so the numbers have diluted, absolutely. EDIT: There was no social media, very few IM clients... But the channels I'm in have been steadily rising (Freenode). http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/irc-002....

Quakenet took a huge drop once it stopped being used to find CS matches.

> This isn't quite true, is it? Most Android users seem to know they're using Android. I could be wrong.

Obviously this is going to be anecdotal, but with the ~20 people I know who aren't technologically savvy, they'd only be able to tell you if they're using an Apple phone or not. My mother, for instance, has no clue that she's using a Windows phone. EDIT: I guess that really goes to show something about the success of Apple's marketing.

I think this has quite a bit to do with what class of phone they buy. Android is marketed very heavily in certain contexts when buying a phone, just as iPhone is. Walk into Best Buy and ask for help on buying a smartphone that isn't basic and Android or iPhone (or Windows phone even) will be part of the pitch. Similar to how if you buy a sports car you are probably going to know something about the engine, if not when going into it, you probably will by the time the salesman is done. If you are buying a commuter car, they may or may not distinguish the engine, and you may or may not care enough to remember.

Saying if Twitch disabled IRC is like saying if Slack changed to an IRC core..., which is not meaningful when discussing how many users Slack and IRC have. Twitch has several millions of users of influence. If they didn't use IRC, IRC would have millions fewer users, yet, Twitch chose IRC. Some of Twitch is IRC, and some of IRC is now Twitch, and millions of people use Twitch consciously. Twitch is the IRC client.

That doesn't seem like a really fantastic outcome for IRC. I guess if you're looking to come up with a conclusion that IRC has more users it is a useful tool. If you're looking to see what the future of distributed and local FOSS and corporate software team communication is? Less so.

Also, in this context I think it's pretty relevant. My personal opinion is that if Slack was just an IRC client instead of having its own propertiary backend, it would have been a better product.

It's also nice that I don't have to signup anywhere to use most IRC servers.

Don't get me wrong—Slack is the perfect tool for businesses, but not for much else.

I hate that argument. If decentralized was so great, then it'd be more popular, but it's not. More and more centralized stuff is exploding in popularity.

Decentralized systems, and peer-to-peer systems, and even centralized systems designed around computers designed to sit next to a wall outlet and draw power from a practically unlimited source are all being replaced by systems that are more centralized and better equipped to talk to mobile. AOL Instant Messenger is dying because it was built around an older paradigm and, at least last time I bothered to try it, is an incredible battery drain on Android devices. Newer messenger apps that are built mobile first or at least make mobile an equal partner to PCs are winning instead. And it's the same for group chat -- IRC is built for old-fashioned PCs, Slack is built with mobile in mind.

Such facilities are bolted onto IRC, but never truly integrate with it the way other solutions have offered.

That is, the network can be decentralized but still administered by a single business entity, in which case you theoretically get a network more robust to outages, or the network can be composed of many separate entities, in which case you are theoretically protected from the bad behavior of any one administering entity, since there are many others (as in your example).

The other reason it may be harder to build a business atop a decentralized network is that the costs associated extra hardware, software, and locations and troubleshooting required to achieve the gains of a decentralized network may outweigh the gains achieved by doing so.

It doesn't make it a logical fallacy to say something is popular because it's superior for its audience.

CTCP and then SEND bots?

Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy.

There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple.

The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and popular.

There is nothing inherent about IRC that would have prevented it to be just as easy as slack if the same resources were put for that work.

These are the same people that are now confused as to why Slack has risen in popularity despite the existence of IRC, which (in their eyes) is technically superior.

Please don't say that Apple products "just work". We've got an office full of them.

I'd rather have "easier to debug when it doesn't work" than "just works, most of the times"

It reminds me of Raspberry Pi. There are lots of more powerful boards that you can buy cheaper, but people still mostly buy RPi because it is the brand.

The entire sports drink industry.

The supplement industry.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget...

that's just the nature of the beast, x.509 is also very old- but old things should be fixed or replaced with better alternatives, slack just fixes a usability problem.. but trades all privacy and freedom for that.

Personally it's not enough, but google has a massive market share because normal people do not consider that their data or freedom has any worth.

at least google is pro-free market in the way that you can extract data out later and migrate, I don't see slack being able to offer that reasonably. (or their incentive to allow it)

2. Using cloud services in exchange for contributing to aggregate data seems like a pretty clear understanding of personal value.

The stuff IrcCloud, Slack and HipChat undo? That's the stuff that seems to be alluring to the steadfast IRC users. Inscrutable commands, nick and chanserv and unencrypted passwords sent via a command that could very easily be typo'd to broadcast in a channel, obscure partitioning behavior that is very much not what most businesses want, a lack of accountability or verifiability, a lack of robust logging and search...

I say these in a negative way, because that's my perspective. For many people they'd list many of these in positive ways like, "improved anonymity", "off the record by default", "network robustness", etc.

Whatever gave you the impression I think this is causal?

Similarly here, you could argue that the popularity argument is stronger because the tools are relatively easy to switch between and people are constantly re-evaluating this choice as new projects are created. Lock in and other switching costs bolster the concern of relying on popularity, but those don't come into play very strongly here.

Why does gchat, snapchat, whatsapp, fb messenger exist if AIM had been fulfilling the need of the market?

gchat & fb messenger are backed by huge companies trying to sew up the communications of a large community for the purposes of selling marketing services. The need they were created to fill is a corporate need, not a popular one.

Whatsapp was primarily popular because it made it cheap to text on your phone. I don't know the history of snapchat, never used it.

Anyway, it's all hypothetical. We don't have a free market with all participants being well-informed.

I don't know if Slack is better or worse (I've never used it, I thought the title was talking about Slackware linux which seemed odd) but you draw a much bleaker portrait of IRC than what I experience day to day using it extensively.

Now if you want to talk about mailing lists I might side with you...

I'm being brutally real. IRC is a brittle, aged, poorly designed protocol even by the standards of 1988 academia. You could design a more robust centralized service just by using off the shelf components today.

Seriously. Use off the shelf Google Container Engine stuff along with some modest websocket work and even relative neophyte will end up with a more robust service with better scaling characteristics.

Really, that's why stuff like Slack and Hipchat exist. Becuase it's not really all that hard to do a much better implementation than what IRC can feasibly do.

But I think if we asked your IRC network how ma you nets plots they experienced in the last 2 years the number would be >1.

I guess it's down to personal preference whether you prefer being able to talk with a partial group knowing that some people are absent, and not being able to communicate at all.

I would much prefer clear indication that there is a problem communicating with others so I can fall back to an alternative method of communication.

I have IRSSI always running in a remote screen session. I read many mailing lists. It's not just my personal preference, it's part of my workflow. When I hit a problem, my immediate reaction after consulting the docs or google is to ask a question on a relevant IRC channel or hit up a mailing list. I don't think I'm the only one that works like this, either.

So asking me to use hipsterchat or slack or gitter or trello or whatever means another another client, and not one that's going to replace my other client, but in addition to it. That's not good. If it had some amazing features other than emoji and fluff, I'd be open to it. But they really don't. People get work done with IRC and a listserv, and that's all that matters.

Let's be honest, Trello and Slack have taken off because young developers aren't familiar with this system and are taking to a new one. And maybe in a few years they will become the norm and my argument will no longer be valid because my workflow will change.

But until that point comes, I agree wholeheartedly that it's a bad choice for FOSS communities, on top of the fact that these are paid services and you're locked out of control of your communications if they decide it's better for their bottom line. That alone seems antithetical to the idea of free software.

I completely disagree with you. My entire team is ~30 or older, and we all used IRC "back in the day". Slack is simply better for communicating with your team because of all the features mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

To suggest ignorance is the only reason Slack and HipChat have taken off is offensive to the people using it because they like it better.

I still use IRC for open source projects I use or contribute to. For the record, I agree with the article insofar as that OSS projects should probably continue to use IRC rather than Slack despite the persistence and team based features. Purely because it's unfair to expect all of your users and contributors to use yet another system for communication that isn't relatively open.

* The ability to directly send files and images to channels is an objective benefit Slack has over IRC, which has even less ability to do that than MIME email (at least MIME lets you post the base64'd file contents of your image, rather than just a clickable link).

* The ability to send long messages or whole source files is an objective benefit Slack has over IRC.

* The ability to, by default and without running a secondary service that can crash or lose connectivity, log and search channels is an objective Benefit Slack has over IRC, which can support that feature only by using bots, and only by tunneling results through privmsgs or forcing users to leave the IRC protocol itself and visit ancillary web sites.

* The ability to edit and delete messages is an objective benefit Slack has over IRC.

There's probably a bunch more. Don't get me wrong: I don't think Slack is amazing; it's good for what it is, but in 2015 it's pretty unremarkable. The issue is that IRC is so. bad.

There are probably still people making fun of poseurs and hipsters who use IRC instead of ICB. The OpenBSD team used to be like that.

Interpreting and displaying those DCC'ed files or cutting longer messages into sub messages and recombining them is something that you could implement via the IRC client just as easily as it was implemented in Slack (not to say that it would be easy, it'd be a lot of work, but it likely would not be much more work than what took to make that function in slack).

If you're modifying IRC anyway, you can modify the server to record logs and make those available to clients.

Same goes for editing.

IRC is not as bad as you think it is, and it wouldn't be an insurmountable effort to make it as good as slack, but open sourced rather than proprietary, which was the entire point of the original article.

Given the problem of sharing a diagram with a team of developers on a group message channel, I'm sure there's someone here who would say they prefer the DCC option of receiving a named file and then opening it with a file viewer, rather than simply dragging the file into the chat window and having it appear instantly to everyone on the channel. The existence of that person is not interesting to me.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-ir...

The worst that can happen to IRC is something like Usenet's death - growing too popular to scale. But scaling isn't of primary importance because a network hosting 100,000 channels is only mildly more convenient than 100 networks hosting 1,000 channels each. Nobody wants a chat stream that looks like a popular Twitch channel, because there is no longer any signal when that happens, so big channels are outliers. (And Twitch chat is IRC-based itself - demonstrating how much this technology is a commodity.)

IRC isn't going to stagnate completely until people decide to give up on text-based chat. The main thing it has trouble with is new client features like inline images.

When most people will do all their chatting in Facebook or Slack, OSS developers will still use IRC.

So run a private IRC server? This is a weird caveat, like complaining that angelfire is an insufficient web platform and you have to run your own http server to do well. There are a billion IRC clients, libraries, and bots out there. There are IRC servers in most distros. There are JS servers in NPM. Why not use them?

We'd rather not manage that ourselves. It's just one more thing we can screw up.

This is different than the FOSS subject of the article, but it true that convenience is compelling.

I think we migrated to Slack for connectivity reasons, fonts and general user interface, and the bigger list of integrations. Are these worth $6 per user per month? If you've got the money then maybe. But it's by no means a given.

Originally, we were using Campfire.

As needs grew beyond just putting out fires, we looked at Hipchat, Flowdock, and Slack. We probably would have gone with Hipchat (because of the price), if they had SSO, or better JIRA integration. Slack had both.

I'm guessing it does not, and setting this server up was considerably more irritating than just spawning off another t1.micro and apt installing IRC onto it.

And even then, they'd further need to exploit some vulnerability in your IRC server to do it unnoticed.

I hope you have a repeatable provision, AMI, static IP linked to a tcp loadbalancer and autoscaling group in the event AWS rotates out your instance.

And of course, the same goes for your logging and search and file sharing infrastructure. And of course, similar caveats exist for the database said features use.

Slack isn't a file sharing platform, it's a communication platform. As such, they try to make communicating about, discovery and grouping of files in dedicated file sharing platforms easier.

This is the realm of systems administrators, if you can't read a 20 line config file then sure, run slack..

but for a biggish company that values security and publishes NDA's like mine, an IRC server is a better solution.

however, Project Managers fucking -love- emoji and sending word documents across the planet.

And you'd take on the burden of constellation of comparable services as opposed to a white label hipchat because....?

https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a...

source? or at least names of networks/IRCds?

freenode at least has 19 channels with more than 1000 users currently, and one with just barely more than 2000.

    ##linux        2072 :It's official! We're now Linux.Chat! | Channel website: http://linux.chat | Pastebin: http://paste.linux.chat | Spammers or trolls? use !ops <troll's nick> <reason>". | For op assistance, join ##linux-ops | Feel at home and enjoy your stay
    #ubuntu        1798 :Official Ubuntu Support Channel | IRC Guidelines: http://ubottu.com/y/gl | IRC info: http://ubottu.com/y/irc | Pastes to http://paste.ubuntu.com/ | Download: http://ubottu.com/y/dl | Currently supported: 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 15.04, 15.10
    #python        1763 :Don't paste, use https://bpaste.net/+python | http://bit.ly/psf-coc | NO LOL | Tutorial: http://bit.ly/MCAhYx | New programmer? http://goo.gl/c170V | Specify 2.x or 3.x in your question | Find your local User Group: http://goo.gl/S1Zsq | #python-fr #python.de #python-es #python.tw #python.pl #python-br #python-nl #python-ir #python.it #python-ro #python-india #python-hu #python-dev
    #debian        1707 :Debian 8 Jessie released! /msg dpkg jessie ; /msg dpkg wheezy->jessie ; /msg dpkg install jessie | current point releases: /msg dpkg 8.2; /msg dpkg 7.9 | NO FLOOD: /msg dpkg paste | /msg bots NOT people | offtopic: #debian-offtopic | testing/unstable: #debian-next (irc.oftc.net) | chanlogs: /msg dpkg irclog
    #archlinux     1655 :Welcome to Arch Linux World Domination, Inc. <+> Be kind to the people who are helping you. Be kind to the people you are trying to help. <+> FOSDEM 2016 participation! https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-events/2015-October/000544.html <+> Yes we know about Twitch
    #freenode      1566 :Welcome to #freenode | tor-sasl is offline until further notice | Staff are voiced; some may also be on /stats p -- you can /msg us at any time | FAQ: https://freenode.net/faq.shtml | Channel guidelines: https://freenode.net/poundfreenode.shtml | Blog: https://blog.freenode.net | Be nice!
    #haskell       1505 :http://www.haskell.org/ | https://wiki.haskell.org/IRC_channel | Paste code/errors: http://lpaste.net/new/haskell | Logs: http://tunes.org/~nef/logs/haskell/?C=M;O=D http://ircbrowse.net/day/haskell/today?mode=recent | http://reddit.com/r/haskell | Administrative issues: #haskell-ops | Hackage status? http://status.haskell.org | http://downloads.haskell.org
    #Node.js       1252 :Can't talk? Get registered on freenode (http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup ) | Current Stable v5.0.0 (LTS: Argon v4.2.1) | Mission Statement: http://bit.ly/node-irc-mission-statement | Info: http://nodeirc.info | Logs: http://logs.nodejs.org/node.js/index | On codes of conduct: http://j.mp/1RFlyvr http://blog.izs.me/post/30036893703/policy-on-trolling
    #go-nuts       1242 :isgo1point5.outyet.org | golang.org | known issues: golang.org/issue | channel log: botbot.me/5/log | don't ask to ask; just ask | ʕ◔ϖ◔ʔ | gophercon2015 videos: https://goo.gl/vKWB3Q
    ##javascript   1207 :Can't talk? Get registered on freenode (HOWTO: http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup ). | ECMAScript, JavaScript. JS *not* Java. | Say "!help" (or ask and wait). | Say "!mdn abc" for docs on "abc". | Don't paste code in the channel.
    #git           1169 :We use git, but don't be a git. Help given and wanted, or just gorge on candy | Current stable version: 2.6.2 | Start here: http://jk.gs/git | Getting "cannot send to channel"? /msg gitinfo .voice | Beware the git-reaper this Hallow's Eve: he comes for your rebases
    ##security     1152 :Computer & Physical Security http://fnsecurity.org/ http://ow.ly/gsVTo | Type !op to summon staff - Be nice or GTFO. -- Toothe is seeking his stalker from a security presentation on Oct 27!
    #bitcoin       1126 :Current v0.11.1 | DO NOT POST ADDRESSES | uPnP vuln: https://bitcoin.org/upnp-vulnerability | https://bitcoin.org/ | bitcoin.com is SCAMMY | https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Faq | No pricetalk (#bitcoin-pricetalk), ads, trading (#bitcoin-otc), begging, altcoins | Web wallets will probably steal your money | URLs are often MALWARE
    #ansible       1123 :Ansible - http://docs.ansible.com *** 1.9.4-1 has been released - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-announce/r_uNM1lWlAE *** Ansible 2.0.0 beta 2 is ready for testing - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/krpeTwi3mpo
    #gentoo        1103 : Gentoo Linux Support | Can't speak? /j #gentoo-ops | long pastes: dpaste.org | masked by license? http://x.vu/WgxYLs | | Unworking hibernate and suspend? emerge -1 upower-pm-utils | firmware not loading? http://goo.gl/MzVLBN | perl conflicts? http://goo.gl/n1FMk8 | Be nice! http://xrl.us/kftd
    #bash          1082 :FAQ: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ | Guide: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide | Ref: http://gnu.org/s/bash/manual | http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/ | http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes | Check your script: http://www.shellcheck.net/ | Mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-bash | Devel: http://xrl.us/bmodjy
    ##networking   1074 :Computer Networking | If you have a question, just ask it! | Please don't paste - http://paste.debian.net | M = mega = (10^6). m = milli = (10^-3). Mi = mebi = (2^20). B = bytes. b = bits. | Vendor Help = #$vendor | pastebin iptables-save | Why aren't you using IPv6 yet? | IP address classes died in 1993 | VPNs were not designed for anonymity https://goo.gl/iLyXUP
    #vim           1050 :Can't Talk? Get Registered on freenode (HOWTO: http://ur1.ca/90niw) | Vim 7.4.900 http://www.vim.org | Don't ask to ask! | Use :help and :helpgrep | WIKI: http://vim.wikia.com | PASTE: http://vpaste.net/?ft=vim | DONATE: http://www.vim.org/sponsor
    #puppet        1000 :Puppet Enterprise 2015.2: http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/whats-new | Puppet 4: http://bit.ly/1fCLbPX | Help: http://{ask,docs}.puppetlabs.com | Beaker users read this! http://bit.ly/1zE2DYU | Bugs/Improvements: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/ | Logged http://bit.ly/11ifvbU | Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/1wTNy65 | PuppetConf Videos http://bit.ly/1NWiHQb

The problem is that all traffic has to be carried to all nodes brokering connections for a channel. When you have a LOT of traffic this gets onerous.

You CAN scale these channels. But it requires some experience and most people never even consider that there might need to be action taken. The Freenode admins know what they're doing, and I respect them enormously for keeping freenode as responsive as it is on what amounts of a 25 year old, bad implementation of a distributed algorithm.

But that's not what we were told. Another admin from espernet basically had us kill the project because they said the way Eirc was using the system constituted a "significant load" and "would not scale well". We were growing really fast and proxying maybe 3-10 users per bot connection on average. I think your team came to us with the problem right as we were really exploding with users.

We basically massively scaled back that deployment of a really cool and interesting feature. Because we didn't want to be an undue burden on our gracious hosts. Now you tell me that this was just some admin giving us an exaggeration?

That's a very frustrating detail to learn. Probably not your fault, but thanks for the clarification I guess.

Additionally, we hesitate to cater to this use-case as it often ends up turning into "we want your network to relay messages between our bots" instead of "we want to talk to other people". We've found that channels used for such bots are typically not sufficiently staffed and frequently a target of abuse, which ends up taking network staff time to resolve.

Lastly, we've had a number of technical issues supporting certain pieces of IRC client software. Older versions of EiraIRC in particular have some nasty bugs; the worst of which is that they tend to get stuck in some state where they hold multiple connections to the network open while continuing to attempt to connect again and again, with no delay. While this doesn't impose load that our servers can't handle, it does generate a lot of administrative log traffic that is bogus and dilutes important log traffic.

Many of these use cases can be covered by IRC, but our network isn't configured to handle such use easily as it often looks very similar to the sort of abuse we usually deal with. The common denominator in most cases like this is that it's taking too much of the staff's time and attention to support the channel and its clients. Our time is finite, and for the health of our network, we'd rather say "no" to a few channels than to make all channels suffer from thinner network staff resources.

Personally, I think that you're describing a lot of limitations that we nearly crashed into with the specific implementations of EsperNet at the time. I think if a more modern system were brought to bear on the problem, they wouldn't exist. But that's all speculation; I don't know EsperNet's current or previous software well enough to say with certainty.

I don't want to sound ungrateful. What we had, and what we still do have to a lesser extent, was amazing. I wish we could have scaled it, because it was well on its way to being a 40000-user-a-day connected gaming chat network expressed via the in-game chat of Minecraft.

Sadly, that's the nature of prototypes and free software. I was willing to work on EiraIRC, but the author... seemed uncomfortable with the idea when we approached them. It's... a strange corner of the world that Minecraft modders live in.

"Your use case would basically break EsperNet (but it's because of our implementation! We have a lot of issues with our implementation but they're not because IRC can't handle it!)."

If the protocol's limitations mean that their use case is not viable due to the strain it places on the administrative side, it's still a limitation.

It certainly is a limitation, but any kind of service needs DDOS mitigation.

No one's arguing against using it for your company. Ok, the article is for some reason, but that doesn't invalidate the main point.

Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough?

You go on as if your first sentence stands up on it's own. It makes no sense at all.

Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more.

Everyone I know working in academia or on a startup that uses any kind of instant chat uses Slack. None of them previously used IRC for the same purpose.

And it's just _obvious_ why, once you've used Slack for a while. They're quite different -- IRC is a protocol for real-time discussion on the internet. Slack is a business tool that incorporates real-time discussion.

Uh, nope. Most people use communication platforms due to network effects: because they were invited to use it, because their friends/coleagues use it. Slack is no different.

I mean, Slack appeared on scene after many other technologies existed. People recommend it for their friends because it works well. There is no global network effect at play.

Wow, going off the deep end here. Unless you are a time traveler, there is no way to not use IRC because of slack, 'prior to slack existing.'

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN, regardless of whether someone has misunderstood you. Please don't do this again.

Some of your other comments have crossed into incivility as well. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html