Daily for 10+ years. Of course the instance sometimes loses connection, and I have to re-establish.

IRC beats ALL social networks, in my experience. I've learned more, and helped/gotten help more from it, than any other source.

Started out on UnderNet. Gave up on it years ago. I'm on FreeNode. I only get on other networks if whoever has the channel doesn't have their primary presence on FreeNode.

I hang out in channels related to Linux and programming languages.

I've tried all the popular IRC clients. I always come back to irssi. irssi+<multiplexer of choice, I prefer tmux> is a marriage made in heaven. :)

I absolutely do, daily, with a 24/7 irssi instance running in screen on a VPS I can connect to from anywhere, but I don't frequent any popular channels or servers, just smaller ones with channels that are mostly small groups of friends who have known each other for 15 years rather than general purpose channels with a stream of new people.

Same.

I do from time to time, but grudgingly. I think the time has come for the Slack/Mattermost/Rocket.Chat model for a number of reasons:

  1. Better support for hypermedia
  2. Acceptance with more non-technical users, who often plan an important role in development
  3. Mobile-friendliness means I can close the laptop and continue the conversation on the train easily
  4. History logs are much easier to search
  5. Commercial support
  6. Backwards compatibility with IRC via plugins

The channels I follow are:

  - #django
  - #react
  - #elasticsearch

This has been on my mind recently as I've started a Slack group for the Stockholm Tech community [1], and I've also been validating the need one for the Django Community as well.

[1] - https://stockholm-tech.m3b.net

IRC is still big for programming. Your language and/or framework of choice has a channel. The quality depends on the community, though.

The best alternative to IRC for "communities" is Discord. The React community uses it and it's quite fast and looks fine. It's also a bit like IRC in that you log in and then join networks with channels. It's meant for gamers though, so no text logging.

For GitHub projects, Gitter is great. Integrates well with GitHub and all it takes is one click. Performs fine too.

Every Slack chat for any open source community slows down my computer to a crawl. I love it for work and stuff, but no idea why people use it for 500+ people chats.

I don't use IRC for my social life, but it's essential to my professional and software life.

Freenode, without a doubt. I've learned a lot discussing stuff on the channel, received a lot of help, and met a lot of people.

My favorite channels:

#vim - Super helpful, from extreme newb questions, to learning how to us vim more efficently, to plugin discussion, and learning about features you never even asked for

#python - Another friendly community from the pythonista to someone new to programming.

Things I don't like:

- Disconnects. It's 2016, it's absurd I need to use a VPS to keep up with my channels on a laptop.

- Join spam

- Excessive reliance on bots

- Hard for newbies, leading to a monoculture and excessive like minded thinking.

Not on a daily basis, but I sometimes get in Freenode looking for support from the devs in some projects.

Fun fact: Last time I had to help a customer with their application running on my platform, I went to Freenode to learn more about the technologies used by that app (had some specific questions after reading the documentation). The customer was actually there in the same IRC channel, looking for help too, and recognised me. We had a fun conversation and were able to advance further on our troubleshooting together :)

Like a lot of people, not for social purposes of internal communications, but to engage with open source communities on FreeNode.

There are a half dozen projects I use whose IRC channels are the best place to get urgent help or to talk through a complex problem or corner case. For the ones whose mailing lists are full of tumbleweeds, it can be the only viable option to get help.

We use Slack at work and I use Facebook Messenger and iMessage for everything else.

Sometimes I'll watch illicit NBA streams where there will be a chat next to the video and I'll shitpost in there.

Most "channel" type discussion is best done in subreddits or places like HN rather than real-time chat. At least in my experience. I wasn't around during the heyday of IRC though so I have a bit of a different perspective.

> Most "channel" type discussion is best done in subreddits or places like HN rather than real-time chat.

I wasn't around it as well, but I feel the types of discussions you get on reddit/HN is extremely different from irc/slack.

Not really, I used it daily a year ago but since then not so much. If I want to get in touch with the key people of the 'project' I am involved in I'd open it. But now Slack replaced it, it is not exactly the same people but almost.

#haskell has been fun to hang out in. Had some well respected people in the community help me on some trivial problems. I recently realised there is a haskell beginners chat to. I probably should have give there instead!

I use it a lot at work, the company have an IRC channel for each software on freenode, and an internal server.

I also use it to talk with my friends and to ask questions on various programming languages/api on their respective channels.

Mozilla has a nice network, especially their Rust related channels. I occasionally hop on there using LimeChat on my Mac .

Unfortunately I don't really use IRC because all my friends/family use more user-friendly services like WhatsApp or Slack.

Nope. I am frustrated that the tool for discussing some software projects is one which doesn't allow multi-line comments.

I used to, I stopped a few years ago when the old channels became empty.

Yes, irc.mixxnet.net port 6697 channel #armind

i lurk in #opendarwin on freenode. bunches of friendly start-up orientated minds and intelligent conversation...