[1ark]

Been trying to get back into IRC recently. Because of nostalgia. Like some others said, and I am realizing, it is not a very good place to exchange ideas or even ask about problems. Chat is not good for these things. Forums, mailing list, StackOverflow etc., even Twitter is much better, because everyone have time to craft and edit their messages, and think things through. It is usually archived and searchable. In chat, the message is easily lost or the conversation has carried on to another topic before you are able to respond a long message, like this one.

[Kim_Bruning]

It's really good for troubleshooting though. Once people start helping you it's a very powerful tool. It also helps immensely wrt absorbing the culture around a particular language or system.

Often a group of people will have an IRC channel, a website, multiple blogs, servers, etc. It's one tool in a spectrum of tools.

[wbl]

Or it ends up on bash.org