IRC

I could not believe myself, that I finally created an IRC account.

Lot of people have asked how come I am not on IRC. They told me that we get to interact with smart people on IRC, including creators of great software, libraries, framework. But for some reason, I resisted. It felt complex, compared to modern communities like Telegram, Discord etc.

Today someone suggested it again on the Doom Emacs Telegram channel, and this time I decided to give an honest try.

So here I am.

Choosing a client

While there are a lot of IRC client apps to choose from, I decided to continue with ERC built into Emacs 😄 This means I don’t need to switch to a different app. Plus IRC being text based, it makes sense it belongs to an editor app like Emacs 😉

I had connected to IRC servers in the past, only briefly. So I know there is a nickname on IRC. But like any other social app, you don’t need an account (usually paired with an email and password)

Account is optional.

I wasn’t sure how that works.

So I went ahead and registered

Registration

Since IRC is text based protocol, the registration is via : /msg NickServ REGISTER YourPassword youremail@example.com

The password in plain text. But I assume it is only in my Emacs. Even in browser, technically it is visible till sent over the wire so 🤞

I got email confirmation email, and verification was again a command just like above /msg NickServ VERIFY REGISTER YourNickName YourVerificationCode

Email contained exact command to paste. 👍

I don’t know how to Quit 😄

I don't know how to quit may be a motivational line, Or SO question about vi/vim But in my case, I didn’t know how to exit out of ERC session.

Following are actual attempts 😆

<mandarvaze> quit
No target

<mandarvaze> exit
No target

Finally, I RTFM and figured /quit to disconnect from a server.

Joining (and leaving) a channel

/join #pythonpune /part #pythonpune

I found basic IRC guide here

In case you are curious, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat