What channels are still active? I connected to freenode for the first time in years a few months ago and it was a ghost town. Would love to get back into some programming/tech communities on IRC.
Freenode melted down a few years back, there was a lot of drama around what happened, but I don't think it's active anymore and if it is, it's probably not what you remember. The community splintered and moved to other hosts.
A lot of users left freenode in 2021.
Many moved to Libera.chat instead. While others may have moved on from IRC altogether when they left freenode.