IRC as a World-Changing Medium

khaladan writes "Wired has an interesting article titled Chat Room That Built the World that talks about the power of developers helping each other on IRC. The article covers the case of #winprog on EFnet, where people such Justin Frankel (creator of Winamp), John Johansen (DVD Jon), and Shawn Fanning (of Napster fame) have come to chat, hang out, and get help. Many from Microsoft visit the channel as well. Ben Knauss calls it 'innovation in its purest form, without ego, money or fame as its goal.'"

Comments

well, I doubt it will be like that anymore

[cwtrex]

I find that part of an IRC channel's culture is the people that attend it. Now that the channel has been advertised, do you think those people will continue to show up? More importantly do you think the quality of help will maintain? I believe that now it has been advertised, the quality of programming help will now decline. *crosses fingers hoping that isn't true*

Re:well, I doubt it will be like that anymore

[jmcmunn]

Honestly, the people who you are worried about are likely to see this article and go visit the room for a day or two and then forget about it. So for the next few days it might not live up to the expectations portrayed, but give it a week o rso and I bet it will be back to normal.

Re:well, I doubt it will be like that anymore

[equex256]

problem is, most irc channels these days are full of kids that demand attention and instant help, as well as ops and regulars with overgrown egos and a distaste for even helping people who came to the channel after much research on their questions.

this combination renders channels with a bad atmosphere and they end up wih a lot of idlers, and well aquinted regulars helping only each other. i find myself reading official documentation and using web forums. efnet as a programming institution is dead.

i used to hang in #winprog (huhuhuUHUHUHuhuhUHU) as well as other programming channels on efnet. even if #winprog got on /. now, its been dead along with most other once-helpful chat channels for a time .

Re:well, I doubt it will be like that anymore

[dasunt]

A large portion of everything sucks. :p

That includes IRC. There are a lot of horrible, horrible IRC channels. There are also a few great IRC channels.

The other day, I needed to figure out how to draw the smallest possible polygon that would contain several points (not homework -- massaging GPS data). So I went to a very good channel I knew about and asked. Turned out to be a "convex hull" problem, and that gave me enough information to google for a lib, sample code, and even a binary.

World-changing? No. But damn useful? Yes.

What would I do without IRC...?

[Xshare]

Well... aside from the obvious joke answer, I wouldn't have finished nearly as many projects as I have, spent much more time watching TV, and generally not worked as much as I have without IRC. Sure, I guess that makes me a nerd, but honestly, the type of community you can find on *certain* IRC channels (I'm hoping you know the type I'm talking about, I don't mean all the crappy warez channels and random chat channels) is about as helpful as anything else out there. I can almost always find my answer, regarding almost anything.

Maybe it used to be that way...

[mindmaster064]

I believe that what is said here USED to be true. IRC was a great medium for exploring hobbies, and computing just happened to be one at some point in time. That is no longer true, and computing is not a hobby it is as necessary simply to function in the modern day world...

Now, if you go into any particular IRC room... even a "tech" room... the noise level dwarfs the signal... go to #perl and you overhear people speaking of their cute little cat, go to #linux and everyone is asking how to re-install winderz..

- Mind

Without ego?

[Jouser]

Many from Microsoft visit the channel as well. Ben Knauss calls it 'innovation in its purest form, without ego, money or fame as its goal.'"

I think IRC is worse than ever. More and more jerks! People are so arrogant and far from being without ego. I think you need to be pretty well advanced in your skill-set in order to use IRC properly. Newbies be warned: you'll just be flamed on IRC if you ask for help.

Re:Blah

[Anonymous Coward]

It's often rather ... boring to chit-chat like an idiot with a user who only comes to say average of 4 words per sentence, 1 sentence a minute; first sentence being "Can I ask?", second "I have a problem", third "Can you help me?". Imagine wasting 10 minutes of time with every user who asks because you have to answer stuff like this; now imagine you're on the channel on regular basis.

Isn't it better to cut through the crap, say "I have a problem $foo with $software in $version, it does $something although I believe it should do $somethingelse because the docs say '$quote'", so everybody can focus to solving the problem rightaway?

We use irc at work

[Kalroth]

At work we've got a semi-private irc channel where the majority of the developers and lead developers hang out.
It's a simple way of communication and it excels in situations where not all people are in-house, especially in situations where I want to paste 12 lines of code/xml/etc. to a colleague and ask him if it'd work against his interface/service/etc.

Just as long as people remember that it's a second form of communication, nothing can beat actually being physically present :)

irc w/out ego

[kubla2000]

irc w/out ego??? hahahahaha.

Re:It's so 80s

[Taladar]

Half of the things you describe are client-specific (you probably used mirc which could really use some improvements), the other half is too tech-help-channel specific to be built into IRC itself. It would probably be better to implement something like that as a Service (a la Chanserv or Nickserv) on top of IRC.

No /. effect on efnet.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it had any effect, it didn't show up in the graphs: http://searchirc.com/network/EFnet,daily

#WinProg

[ilitirit]

I remember using #WinProg a few years ago when I started learning Win32. Sure enough, it was a helpful resource, but at the time the regulars (not all though) were some of the most arrogant, egotistical (and in many cases, unhelpful) people I had ever come across.

Typical conversations:
[ilitirit] how do i check the class styles for a certain FOOBAR?
[winprogger] learn to use Spy++, n00b
[ilitirit] ok, where do i can get Spy++?
[winprogger] AARGH!!! are you stupid or something? it's PART OF VS 98!!!
[ilitirit] i'm using Borland's commandline compiler.
[winprogger] ....

[ilitirit] how do i create window without a titlebar?
[winprogger] how do not run into tree and smash your nose?
[ilitirit] ????
[winprogger] YOU JUST DON'T DO IT!!! don't specify that it should have one!! sheesh. is everyone suddenly getting dumber or something?
[ilitirit] erm... i don't think you can do that
[winprogger] lol
[winprogger] ...
[winprogger] ok

not too mention the countless "IT'S IN THE DAMN TUTORIAL FFS!!!" responses...

Without Ego???

[EddyPearson]

What do u mean "without ego" IRC is the most egocentric protocol on the net ;) Its all a bunch of geeks hanging out on chan with names like #null0r and #l33tkr3w trying to impress people who they don't know on the other side of the world, by tring to out-geek them in certain aspects, all the time ever chasing that elisive @ sign!

Re:What's the big deal with IRC?

[dkf]

I'm just figuring that most IRC fans haven't figured out to look in comp.embedded, or comp.linux. Or to sign up to some mailing lists.

Just like I'm figuring you don't know the difference between talking to someone face-to-face and writing letters to them? When you're operating at the real cutting edge, the immediacy of a chat system like IRC (or Jabber) can't be beat; the alternatives to it are really either telephone conferencing or real physical meetings, both of which can get really expensive to set up and run on a regular long-term basis.

*Ahem*

[DNS-and-BIND]

IRC does not have "chat rooms". AOL has chat rooms. IRC has channels.

Re:Blah

[DNS-and-BIND]

Why not actually use IRC, instead of treating it as some sort of free consulting agency? Stick around the channel even when you don't need help, answer questions from others, and then when you DO need help, people will know you and not tell you to unlink /dev/zero to fix your problems.