I am well aware it isn't "an app". I was using IRC in about 1997 and stopped in about 2017 because other options that were better suited to my needs, and had the people I wanted to talk to, arose.
The second part of your response isn't helping you move towards the end state you want. If anything, it's going the other way. Product empathy isn't optional--ask yourself: why would I write or fund an IRC client when I have things that work for me already? Like, this is the Linux-on-the-desktop advocacy all over again. "Your thing doesn't work for me because of X [usually literally X on Linux, but you get the idea], but Y does." "Well, expend time or money to fix X!" Why? You're the one who likes X. You're advocating for it. Why would I fix the thing you like when the thing I use already works?
Take the sibling response to yours--I learned something new in seeing https://thelounge.chat, and while I don't want to run software to deal with chat, that was a cool thing to see. I learned something! I'll remember it later!
I did "solve the problem". I use Slack and Discord to talk to the cohorts who used to be on IRC.
Your behavior in this thread is really strange. Discord's a fine tool. So is Slack. I have nothing to fix, and my posts in this thread have been explaining why for me they're fit for purpose when IRC isn't. Why would I "do something about" a situation that isn't a problem for me?
Then why bring up IRC’s lack of a “pleasant” app? Just seems like a problem you can and should solve for yourself, but is otherwise wholly unrelated to the protocol.
One doesn’t complain about http because the mobile browser options aren’t to one’s liking.
You don't have to take responsibility for fixing something just because you criticized it.
Fixating on the term used is a tad disingenuous. I think most people reading hacker news understands that the IRC ecosystem is being referenced here - not the protocol itself. IRC has been around 30+ years and it still doesn't have any great clients.
If you wanted to build a featureful chat client IRC wouldn't even be a good choice because there is so many things missing from the spec.
Let's put it as simply as possible, because there's the genuine possibility that you don't understand, rather than are just being an acrimonious troll.
You wouldn't be Linux-on-the-desktopping as hard as you are if you didn't want people to use it. As such, if you, as an advocate of a thing, want other people to use it when the alternative is "continue using other things", then the least effective response is "fix it yourself".
I don't need to fix it. I have alternatives that already do what I want. If you want to hector people to use the thing you want them to do, then you had best come correct.
> Then why bring up IRC’s lack of a “pleasant” app?
Because...I was expressing why it isn't fit for purpose?
> One doesn’t complain about http because the mobile browser options aren’t to one’s liking.
If HTTP was functionally unusable in the application model provided by mobile operating systems, you bet people would complain! But HTTP is stateless. IRC isn't. As such, HTTP is not inherently incompatible with a quality mobile experience. IRC is.
And that's not incumbent upon me to fix it--I have no stake. I'm happy with the tools I have. That's incumbent upon people who want other people to use it to fix: the necessity of making something people want to use in order to get them to use it. You get that this is really basic human-interaction stuff, yeah?
You either have a problem or you don’t; since you complained, you do have a problem, and it absolutely is on you to fix.
The “basic human interaction” you are failing to understand here is that you’re refusing to accept your role in fixing your own issues. Nobody is obligated to help you, and it’s frankly insulting to presume someone else ought to do anything about your problem for you.
The open source community doesn’t owe you shit. Your entitled attitude is toxic.
I have participated in open-source communities for over a decade now. It is likely--not guaranteed, but pretty likely--that I have written more open-source code, both for money and not, than you have. And I am befuddled how you are so toweringly angry about something you're interpreting so directly backwards.
I am not saying that IRC has to change to suit me. I never said that. I am saying that IRC is unfit for my purposes. You, as somebody who is advocating for its use, are taking the latter and inferring the former when it was never implied. I don't care if IRC changes, because I have options that better suit me--the net result if nothing changes is that I continue to not use IRC.
And I'm fine with that! I'm not over here bemoaning it. There is no value to me unlocked by pulling up stakes from Slack and Discord and going to IRC that is being kept from me because of bad mobile experiences on IRC. My initial post, which has apparently spun you off to the moon for some reason, was pointing out that it remains unfit for my purposes, and that's why I don't use it. Nothing, and I mean literally, nothing else.
But you're the one pushing the thing.
If you (or other IRC advocates) want me to use it (for whatever reason, network effects usually chief among them), then perhaps you have a problem to solve pursuant to LOE and other needs and all that. That's not my problem, because I have a solution. Usage of your pursuant-to-network-effects protocol of choice is...your...problem. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere, you have product-market fit problems. And it's not other people's responsibility to make the thing you like fit them--they have other choices.
If you insist that don't care--well, to me that's also fine, but advocating for the use of something that is unfit-for-purpose and then having an extremely normal day of responses to mild feedback about why other people use alternatives instead is...I mean, if you want to talk about toxic, find a mirror. Your behavior in this thread is shameful.
None of this changes at all the objective fact that IRC is an open source protocol that you can either adopt in the form of writing a client that's to your satisfaction, or propose changes to the protocol sufficient to resolve your remaining issues with it.
Either you agree with this and recognize your complaints as moot, or you disagree with this and your complaints end up being recognized as incessant, entitled whining about a problem you want someone else to solve for you.
What's shameful is that you're more likely doing the latter than the former, and seem to think you're immune to this because you've worked on open source projects in the past. You're not.
I don't personally give a shit about if you use IRC or not, I just saw your comment and decided to point out the entitled attitude it seemed to present. I haven't used IRC in years.
Generally speaking, when somebody wants other people to adopt a practice, they make sure that practice is fit-for-purpose themselves rather than expecting the people to whom they advocate to stop using things that are fit for purpose, then adopt something unfit-for-purpose, and then fix it.
Your implication that lots of open source communities have historically not done that is absolutely true. But also it's why people don't want to talk to them much, too.
