bIRC

I spent so many hours in IRC in the late 90s and early 2000s. I have seen the netsplits, the drama, the communities that formed. And it was such a fun time. I have seen the IRC client wars, people flaming mIRC users, irssi becoming popular and in a screen session making bouncers feel less relevant to be able to stay up to date with channel activities.

One of my most fun memories has to be on a New Years Eve when someone I talked to for years (but had never met in person) randomly pinged me if I got a fax machine. He had missed the window to sign up for his university course and needed someone to fax it so the timestamp is in the old year. I am still not sure if I should have replaced his math course with some linguistics 101 like Latin. But we got it done, he get in his math course and passed.

So when I see a new IRC client being developed in 2026 I just smile and remember the good old times. Even better, it is a native Mac application, not some web app that slurps up 2GB memory when you click on its icon. Can you image such memory requirements in the current economy?! (For future readers: look up memory shortage of 2026 for context.)

From time to time I toy with the idea what IRC is missing to be a true alternative to Slack and my old, grey bearded mind does not come up with a lot that a nice client could not provide. Threads, something that should not exist in the first place, is where conversations go to die. Gifs and emojis, which seem to be a hard requirement in business communication, should be doable. It surely cannot be a worse user experience than Teams.

I might just give bIRC a shot and see how close the user experience can get. Modern client, old server and good old ZNC. Since it is a native Mac app porting it to mobile should not be too hard. If anything it makes for a fun weekend to get this going with a few friends.