Whatever OSS projects you use have channels on freenode. Keep those open all day and lurk, you'll be amazed how much you learn from osmosis. If someone comes by with an easy question, answer it and you'll have social karma to get help from others when you need it.
You mean you actually keep a chat window open all day long? Isn't that ridiculously distracting?
I check my email twice a day, and HN the same. Anything else that could potentially distract me from what I'm doing gets turned off. I couldn't imagine giving random strangers the ability to intrude into my train of thought whenever they wanted.
My irssi remains open all the time I'm in front of the computer - Shadowcat's primary internal co-ordination means is IRC, plus I'm on a dozen or so irc.perl.org channels, plus a handful on freenode.
It does not, however, alert me in any way as to whether somebody's tried to contact me or not - so it only gets my attention when I want it to, usually because I'm thinking about something and can type responses on autopilot while I do.
Where I work we use IRC as the main way to communicate (we all telecommute) and I have a window open all day long. The secret? Tell your IRC client to make a noise whenever someone mentions your IRC nick and then ignore the IRC window until it makes the noise. Works like a charm and allows me to focus on the task at hand.
I use an IRC bouncer to stay logged in to the IRC servers. I connect to the bouncer, which replays anything I missed on the IRC server while I'm not logged in to the bouncer.
I run znc on a small VPS instance that is always running, always up, so I don't have to worry about keeping my connection to an IRC server open. ZNC (the bouncer) keeps me logged in to the IRC server, and I connect to ZNC when I need to be in contact with others.
I wanted to second this. I do the same thing. We use IRC at my company and we all work remotely. Having IRC in my editor makes things much simpler since I can easily copy/paste code, visit links and generally stay in one environment all day.
I keep the client running in the background (not even minimized). I have it set to save a log of all chats. I occasionally glance through those logs 2-3 times during the day. That's also the same frequency with which I check my mail.
You apparently have ADD. You should seek help. There is a difference in preventing distraction and people "intruding" your thought process. I shut a lot of things off (preventing distraction) as well during the day (including Mail at times), however, IRC doesn't "intrude" in my daily work, it just sits there, open, and I check it when I can, participate in a conversation, and move on.
I much prefer this to posting a question on a forum/stackoverflow etc type site. Probably my own impatience, but I want an answer now.
IRC is actually growing a load. It's pretty widely used. The fun thing is, I don't think anyone really realizes it, and it's still considered 'old stuff' by many.
If you look at the numbers, twitter usage is about the same as one of the tiny IRC networks in terms of volume of messages. Of course it's apples vs frogs comparison, but still... More communication is done on IRC than twitter and all the other "hot" new things.
#startups is good on freenode (If you can stand freenode and their 'ways')
I think you may be to blame for some of this growth ;) Not that I mind...I've used IRC for ages and I'm glad to see that people are gaining interest in it again.
I started using irc in january of 2008, about the time I started using linux.
I'm on foonetic and subluminal (a new network, about 6 or 7 months old).
foonetic is host to the various #xkcd-<whatever> channels, as well as the main #xkcd channel.
subluminal is just something some friends of mine put together. the average user count is in the twenties.
Absolutely this. Freenode is a tremendous resource. I adore the fact that for just about any project I can tab over to IRC, /join #projectname, and have a channel full of people who can answer the big blocking question that I can't find an answer for on Google.
If you can't lurk and review in realtime, setup logging on your irc client and review later. I do automatically no matter what, happy that if a great conversation occurs, it's automatically captured. Screen, tmux, or similar may be helpfull in this case; setup your client in tmux on appropriate computer, detach, and review later.
This is a feature. Most of the people on an IRC channel are lurkers. And the channels are very quiet so that people can hear you when you do speak. Believe me, I wish they were quieter, because even as they are they tend to be too distracting for me to lurk there while working.
It does seem creepy. Our company's salespeople laugh at the programmers because we really love to gather in one physical room, then sit silently next to each other typing on laptops and communicating largely via Jabber chat and IRC, even though we are two feet away from each other. If you've never tried to concentrate on programming this seems like alien behavior, but it actually makes a lot of sense, for the same reason that it makes sense for all the Drupal devs to sit in one IRC channel but almost never speak.
If you crave more chat, join more channels in parallel.
I guess I don't actually find the 300-lurkers-who-never-talk channels much of a feature. Much prefer the ones with 15-30 or so semi-active users. There can still be large periods of not chatting, but you know who's there, and there's a decent chance that when someone does say something, it's relevant to you. There's a difference between sitting in a room of programmers quietly, and sitting in an auditorium of programmers!
Ive done this, it is amazingly productive. We had jabber server at one place, and all 10 devs were in the same room physically, as well as the chats: #dev #dev_pvt #dev_funny #dev_offtopic #bugs as well as having a dozen side conversations, and talking out loud in the room. Never too much time blocking on conversations, and easily ignorable when working on something deep, but since physical presence is happening, anything super important can trigger an "out loud" interrupt.
Generally, when somebody says "Hi", my reaction is "Oh dear, here comes the dumb question" and I cringe.
9/10 Times I'm right.
Generally I tend to /join and then just sit there for a while to discover the norms and protocols of the channel before speaking, unless I have a specific question/problem.
If I have a specific question/problem then "Just ask" is the best approach, but sadly, 9/10 times I end up fixing the problem myself, and get roped in to help solve 10 other peoples problems while I'm there!.
There's a rare occasion when you'll /join a channel and they'll greet you, but thats part of the 'norms and protocols of the channel' thing, and its usually a hallmark of a small channel, because having 500 users who come and go, if every one said 'hi' , or we greeted each and every one, $topic would never get discussed, and we'd be a 24/7 meet-and-greet channel!
Yep. Freenode IRC. I lurk on about 25 channels, ranging from the local Linux User's Group channel, to the #startups channel (which draws a lot of HN'ers) to the channels for several programming languages I use, etc.
IRC is definitely alive and well, especially on Freenode.
IRC is an indispensable part of my work. The team I'm on uses a private server for team discussions (works great when someone is working remotely), and we also are in a few public channels on freenode. On freenode, I'm in #openstack to talk about cloud object storage infrastructure, #eventlet to learn more about it, and #cloudfiles for Rackspace product-specific questions. #openstack has been pretty active in the last couple of weeks (since we released the code) and has been pretty good for helping people who are learning about the systems. Internally, I can't imagine not using IRC. If I choose to work remotely, or if I'm working odd hours, it becomes a very important tool to keep up with what the other devs are doing.
To stay in the channel when I'm not online, I use an IRC bouncer (znc running on a slice, for me). When I log back in on my computer, I have the conversation I "missed" played back for me. I know other people that use irssi in a screen session to accomplish something similar.
We use Freenode, #grooveshark is an open channel for random techie users who want to talk directly to developers (or each other), and people working on 3rd party extensions/add ons to Grooveshark.
We have other internal invite-only channels for coordinating with external developers on internal projects. We also have github spamming a channel now whenever changes to a repo that a lot of people are coordinating on get pushed.
The #redis channel saved our asses at least once when Pieter Noordhuis wrote a script to help us with a particular issue we were having. :) And the #facebook channel has been a useful resource as well.
Haven't spent much time working on it but so far the bot gets kicked for flooding immediately. May only be a problem because we're using freenode for testing. Long term want to run our own IRC server, but for testing it was easier to just use freenode...
imho great deal of IRC's greatness comes from irssi, an awesome client for it. It has a learning curve though, especially if you are not familiar with screen (or tmux). While you can run it locally, it really shines when you run it in a server inside a screen session, connected via ssh.
Each phone I have had in the past 5 years has had a ssh client available, so I could just attach to my session and have the exactly same client available wherever I go.
I use irc mainly to keep in touch with old friends. I'm also running a small non-profit, and we use irc extensively in internal communications. And occasionally I go to a projects channel on freenode if I happen to have a question or something, the people tend to be quite useful (as long as you ask smart questions and be polite). Lurked some time at ##c++, from which I feel that I learned a lot from.
I've investigated this possibilty and found that OpenFire (Jabber server) is very easy to work with. You can control user account centrally, and create rooms and assign who can access which rooms, from a web GUI. I've yet to see an IRC server that easy.
I think we use plain ircd as a server software. As for the authentication, we have shell servers to run irssi with in the same LAN, so we haven't perceived need for any additional auth on the ircd.
InspIRCd is pretty nice and a bit less crufty than the older implementations (unreal etc.). But as others have said, depending on your needs, a simple skype groupchat might work just as well.
We (developers and sysadmins) use it at the big corporation where I work. Keeping irssi open in screen (GNU screen) means I can connect remotely from anywhere with a single session, and it doesn't appear when I'm focused on something else in a different screen session. Each project gets its own channel. It's way better for collaboration than having to match schedules for each little question.
It's also very helpful for asking specific questions about OSS projects, as mentioned. The people actually developing projects hang out in IRC, not at StackOverflow.
I hang out on a private IRC server with about 15 folks, mostly old friends of mine working in various parts of the industry. It's primarily a place to talk about geeky topics and complain about work.
Same here. We've had a private channel running for over a decade now and as people move to new jobs and shuffle around, the channel is always home.
We've even built a bot to capture URLs and tweet them to a private handle so people can check out sites after work or while away from the channel.
To the person asking if IRC is distracting, it's a LOT less distracting than the hipster that sits next to me and is constantly checking his smartphone every time an SMS comes in. Pavlov would roll over in his grave.
Ditto. We also have a wiki and a tumblr site where we post immature nonsense. We all (except one of us) used to work at the same place, but now we're geographically and employmentologically spread out.
My group of peers does the same thing. It's a pretty broad cross section of nerds (as broad as that can be) -- the channel is busy 8-5 weekdays and dead outside those hours. Basically, they're my virtual (and one physical) officemates.
I telecommute, and most of my day-to-day conversations go over IRC. My IRC client has ~50 open windows at the moment, but less than half of them are actual Open Source channels, many of them are direct queries with the user. And thanks to screen, I never log off and don't miss discussions, someone trying to get in touch, commit and release messages to -dev channels, and so on.
If it suits one's style, it's an easy and nice way to stay linked to one or more communities.
irc is still the only way to meet "the guy on the street" online. that's mainly why it still survives, despite its quirks.
i don't know what you mean by "good" server/channels, but let me say this:
back when irc was _the_ chatting medium, all the low-iq trolls that today are on the web were on irc. so the channels were ruled by a very strict dictatorship. you needed to be very lucky (or meet with real-world friends) to have a decent chat.
now that the trolls and other offenders largely moved out to the http space, i think irc has gotten its "underground" status back. this means you'll most probably find whatever you're after inside large networks. for example, if you want to know a quick fact about norway, go to #norway in undernet and shoot. somebody will reply. you need a python tip, #python in freenode is where some python gurus hang out.
i personally admire freenode for having managed to establish the "showing op status is not polite" netiquette. you can see channels with hundreds of users where not one op has shown up for ages. that was not easy to imagine not so long ago :)
Just curious, why not have the windows key be your primary meta for XMonad? In general I try and use that key for my WM shortcuts since most apps don't use it.
Because it's slightly less convenient for my thumb to reach, and just feels unnatural: it causes an ever-so-slight strain as I try to keep my fingers on the keyboard's home row. Yes, I can be pretty finicky sometimes. I know I'd probably get used to it if I tried, but it's rare for me to need alt for applications.
At the company where I work (a web startup with 100 and some odd employees, half of which are the engineers) EVERYONE uses IRC. The engineers, yes, all the teams have their own channels, general channels, etc.
But so do the support staff, the business folks, marketing, etc. Its amazing.
Of course. Mostly for private communication with friends and with BitlBee gateway. But it seems that many OSS project have freenode channels, that are very active, and not only that. There's very active #haskell channel on freenode, #xmonad, there are various fedora channels, there's an unofficial channel for students of the faculty where I study now, even channels like #lgbtreddit.
I don't see any decline of IRC use in any foreseeable future.
Presently I'm in 12 channels on 7 servers. IRC fills a need for "semi-synchronous" communication in group form for me. part crowdsourcing, part water cooler gossip, it's entertaining and educational. It's real-time enough to satisfy the feeling that, as a teleworker, someone else is there, but not so real-time that I must devote my full attention (like a phone or video chat).
The big benefit to IRC for me is its ease of setup (apt-get install ircd-hybrid), end-to-end ownership of the communication protocol and infrastructure (ability to ensure privacy and anonymity, if necessary or expected), ease of extension and long-term stability. Or, put another way, "my server, my client, our channel, my friends, our bots." good times.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the (former?) long-time ircd-hybrid developers. I started a PhD thesis on education through IRC studying its social dynamics, but am considering dropping the effort.
I dip my toes into IRC now and again, but keep getting frustrated by the learning curve. Yes, I get the basics of joining channels and chatting. I can see that there's a ton of efficiencies IRC power users have figured out that I haven't.
Any good resources out there for climbing the learning curve to journeyman IRCer?
#kernel-panic on freenode for good Linux and tons of other good discussion. Been there for years. Active right now with 34 people. But pretty much every major FOSS project has an IRC channel, usually on freenode. Every programming language, framework, etc. is represented there. I get tons of good help there and help others as well. IRC is definitely very much alive. I rue the advent of modern one-on-one IM as it really ruins teamwork. A few months ago we threw up our own openfire jabber server and required everyone in the company to be present and it has really boosted awareness of what is going on and replaced the "hallway conversations" we were missing from our distributed development environment.
IRC is one of the primary communication tools for Wikipedia and its sister projects. The community is so distributed, coordinating meetings using UTC time becomes second nature.
There are dozens and dozens of channels. This page attempts to track just some of them.
I use bitlbee to gate all of my IM networks to a single IRC channel which I then point X-Chat at. I also ocassionaly jump onto freenode to get real time support for various open source packages.
Another user of Bitlbee here. It goes hand in hand with using irssi and a bouncer to maintain an always-on presence that I can take with me anywhere I go.
If you're looking for a good tech community / channel to hang out in, I can recommend two. These channels are best suited for programmer / coder types who enjoy hanging out and chatting about tech stuff.
We've had a lot of great support requests and chats with customers on IRC (Freenode, #newrelic).
Like others have mentioned, it's great to have a few rooms open for projects/services you care about, where you can check in every so often and read the backlog. While some rooms are archived, I've never read them that way, but keeping IRC idling in the background can be a great way to keep tabs on things.
I hang out on 3 networks. I am on Freenode for a few different projects I support and associated chat channels that I've been at for years. I am on StarLink, a small network, for the two channels associated with Alpha & Omega Ministries. I am on EFNet for one specific channel of a website.
I also use a local bitlebee server for instant messaging.
All in irssi with screen on a local server in my house.
Yeah, but I try to limit it to 10 channels for as to not get overwhelmed (I have a habit of wanting to check every time something new is said, plus I need room for bitlbee sessions).
I mostly idle on local user groups and language/framework-specific channels. I rarely say anything, but just keeping an eye on the conversations has taught me a lot of stuff I wouldn't have known otherwise.
Another often overlooked use for IRC is as a side channel during events. In conferences, we'll all be in a room, on IRC commenting on talks. During the BP oil spill, a channel (#theoildrum) had 500+ people, including some with oilfield experience, discussing the live ROV feeds, as well as scanning to find lots of ROV feeds that were not visible to the general public.
#startups on Freenode. I use IRC for collaborating with my colleagues (we're a distributed company). EFNet.
shameless plug:
Check out jIRCii. http://jircii.dashnine.org. It runs on OS X, Windows, and Linux. It's (in my opinion) the perfect blend of mIRC and BitchX. It's scriptable too with over 70 scripts contributed.
I was pretty active in the suse project with bug testing and whatnot for a while, so that got me on freenode. I lurk about 15 channels there.
I'm on two private networks with about 5 channels between them and I lurk on Undernet out of nostalgia. I'll hit up Efnet if I'm looking for security related topics.
I use IRC every day. I use it to work with others on opensource projects and many of my past interns and I use it to stay in touch daily, creating a very helpful network. My current interns can get help from not only ne, but people who used to work for me. It's a great networking tool.
At my previous company we had an IRC room for the devs (and whoever else wanted to join) which had a bot that reported on updates to certain feeds within the company, it was pretty useful and it's not distracting at all. I used irssi+screen, the bot was a Supybot.
At my previous workplace, a web devshop, we had a company channel where everyone hanged, even the CEO (when he could). Plus project-channels where we could discuss details of each project, and where we invited clients and partners that used IRC.
I just got on the #reddit channel @ irc.freenode.net the other day and learnt quite a bit (about profits in the medical marijuana industry) by just hanging out there. I actually got on IRC to see if there really was anyone who still used IRC.
I recommend running http://www.bitlbee.org/ and using irssi not only for IRC but for IM as well. For IRC I get a lot out of #pocoo on Freenode and use a private company ircd.
Yes, you can find me on #gllug (Greater London Linux User Group), #amahi (Home Server), #greyhole (folder duplication a la WHS but using Samba) all on irc.freenode.net
And of course irc.quakenet.org #|HSO| and #fidelitas :)
IRC network actually - irc.perl.org is 6 servers, four of them on Shadowcat's hardware, the others donated by individual members of the perl community.
irc is very helpful when interacting with people who don't speak English as their first language, or have a very thick, difficult-to-understand accent.
yes. I meant to post the one about the Rooms IRC client for iPhone getting approved for the AppStore then getting pulled minutes later. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560753
Ironic, and possible relevant.
Personally I do not use IRC. My work blocks it unless I want to court a reprimand by finding those few servers with non-standard port numbers.
At home, I'm too busy with wife and kids, and whatnot to spend any real time chatting. Most of my online activities are batched to only occur once or twice a day which pretty much precludes irc.
STILL use IRC? IRC is in heavier use today than ever before! Not only has the amount of networks (and servers per network) exploded the past 10 years, but so has also the global amount of users per network and IRC as a whole.
I pretty much live on freenode in all the dev channels, but I keep the terminal on a fairly isolated place so that I don't get distracted. Keep a shell on my linode, /lastlog to check to see if anybody was lookin' for me.
