Reminder: IRC exists

General
1

ada on https://Libera.chat still exists and people are still alive, just.

Also, if you hate Discord’s crappy app :wink: which has been broken for dual screen (different resolutions, i.e. scaling) on wayland for 6 months and they’re doing absolutely nothing about it, but IRC exists.

2

That’s a good reminder. I’m not only lurking in #ada, I even set up my own IRC server for my DevOps community as a replacement for, or at least an alternative to, Discord.

IRC not only exists, it’s still happily chugging along after 40 years without any VC money or flashy marketing, but with community love and new features (IRCv3).

3

Did IRCv3 ever happen?

4

Yup, servers like Ergo and clients like Halloy support its new features like chat history.

5

Hey Luke, thanks for the reminder!

I know I used to be much more active there and I wish I could. But I have not connected to it in a long while and I dont think my session is even active any more!

I love IRC. I think it is almost the perfect chat system for any community. And there are plenty of really cool and knowledgeable Ada people there! Maybe once I get my life more on track I may be able to go back there… sight…

Say hi to everybody from me. Also, a reminder that I am always available via email, here or Matrix! Best regards,
Fer

6

I really think forums are far superior to chats :slight_smile:

That’s why I’m happy this place exists! :blue_heart: Thank you!

8

Ok, done.

I think chats are useful when you need something er, quicker…not that irc has been fast for the last year.

9

Both need to exist. I prefer chat services like IRC for short interactive questions where I would want to chat with someone in real time, e.g. a debugging session. Forums are better for more general questions where you might want a consensus, e.g. code review or what methods to apply to a problem where long winded and detailed writing is necessary.

10

I agree. Chat is quick but ephemeral. Forums are slower but persistent. All four of these characteristics can be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on what you need at the moment.

  • Chat is quick - continuous discussion flow vs. little time to prepare a response
  • Chat is ephemeral - Fluff and time-bound topics evaporate quickly vs. valuable contributions are hard to impossible to retrieve later
  • Forum is slower - Time for well thought-out contributions vs. slow progress towards a conclusion
  • Forum is persistent - Useful content can be discovered long after a discussion vs. volume of information grows steadily

That’s why I built my community platform on both mediums.

11

I also agree and for precisely the well expressed reasons @geewiz mentioned.

I’ve been a member for about 25 years and found the irc channel helpful many times. We currently have about 75 ppl present, altho only about 6 or so are active. The channel used to be much more active with ppl from Adacore projects (libadalang, polyorb) present as well as a member of the ARG.

The original (and current) goal of the channel was to bring ppl working on open source Ada projects together. The channel is quite social and friendly and OT discussions are not discouraged, so long as they relate to computing in general. I believe the channel is also very good for beginners. Problems can be dealt with in real-time, rather than waiting for a few hours or a day as sometimes occurs here.

I used to liken the c.l.a newsgroup (which this forum has happily largely superceded) to lecture style and ada IRC to a more tutorial style.

So do please consider joining ada IRC. You will be very welcome and will hopefully help to make the channel more active.

Regards.

12

I guess I forgot to say: for me, in my opinion :slight_smile:

Don’t getting me wrong, both IRC and forums have their place and use cases. I deliberately try to limit my “synchronous” time spent in front of the computer that’s why I prefer asynchronous forums.

But, I plan to be more active on IRC in the near future. I am currently experimenting with various setups :slight_smile: