[lrvick]

I could not do my job as a security engineer without Freenode and irc.hashbang.sh

Honestly IRC is better now than it ever was.

All the skiddies and people that chase the latest hot centralized proprietary web based gif machines are gone leaving only thousands of highly experienced folks who understand how computers work at a low level, maintain their own personal and server operating systems, and love a good problem to dig into and solve.

We also love the random curious new-world person that wanders in wanting to learn our ways ;)

If you are wondering where all the maintainers to your favorite FOSS software are... They never left IRC because they largely prefer to keep the internet decentralized and support open standards.

About the only thing competing with IRC is matrix.org which even has a fancy GUI if you are into that... And it bridges to IRC so you can join those channels too.