Show HN: HN Chat – Minimal Hacker News Chat with User Verification

Re:Show HN: HN Chat – Minimal Hacker News Chat with User Ver... by giancarlostoro on Monday September 05, 2016 @08:01PM (#12432905)

#python and #ubuntu are heavily filled on freenode with over a thousand users though? As well as #debian and #go-nuts (for Go) I think IRC is plenty popular, now if the vast majority idle is another story, people are from all around the globe.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Chat – Minimal Hacker News Chat with User Ver... by danneu on Monday September 05, 2016 @08:48PM (#12433036)

Like #node.js, they have 1000-2000 users connected with probably the same level of engagement, so probably 98% idle which means it's effectively a chat room for about 15 people.

And each person needs to care enough about IRC (e.g. run a VPS) to receive pings or messages while they are away and to see the message history when they return.

Maybe IRC is "plenty popular" which apparently means popular enough to find someone willing to shoot the shit with you if you're in one of its largest channels. But that's a far cry from "IRC is everywhere".

I use IRC every day. I'm just not left scratching my head when I find out that yet another ecosystem chose Slack/Discord over IRC. It blew me away when I saw how active Elm's Slack was while #elm is dead. But that's pretty much how it is with every community I'm part of with a Slack channel.

Sometimes people here suggest "maybe IRC is just for developers", but you can't even format a code block on IRC. :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Chat – Minimal Hacker News Chat with User Ver... by codesterling on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @12:48AM (#12433730)

Over a thousand users; I wouldn't consider that popular. There are 6 times more people dying every hour than total number of users in those channels. And many of those probably overlap.

[ Parent | on HN ]