[eridius]

The benefit, though, is once you are set up with IRC, joining new channels is a breeze, especially since most open source software uses a single network (Freenode). All I have to do is type something like

  /join #rust-lang

and I'm in the new channel. Compare this with Slack, where, no matter how many teams you've joined in the past, you have to go through the exact same rigamarole to join a new Slack team.

[aiiane]

Discord avoids that issue by having a global identifier, similar to your connection to an IRC network.

However, having that global identifier / IRC network connection is a tradeoff - it forces you to use a single consistent identity for every single interaction on that network. For some people this is a plus; for others it is a negative. Slack's teams option allows people to use different identities for different instances.