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when people ask "what advantage could there be to using IRC in this day and age?" ...

I just got annoyed with not finding out about build failures in CI for #fennel. I went to look to see if any chat integration was supported by my CI host, and they didn't have any. then I realized I could just write my own IRC notifier with a short script.

it's 13 lines and the only dependency is netcat, a 27kb program that you probably already have: https://p.hagelb.org/irc-announce.fnl.html
I can write a Slack bot webhook in a single curl command.
same can be done with discord too, as well as msttermost, last I used it.
also you can post rich text and url links unlike irc lol
> curl
if you're doing apples to apples you can do an HTTP 1.1 call as simply as that lisp.

TLS is a bitch.
advantages of IRC: protocol is incredibly simple, implementations are absurdly mature, probably not possible to be more optimized than it is by this point, extensions already exist to add modern niceties ( https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory )

unfortunately they will respond to every one of these advantages with, "don't care"

protocol -> but i was just gonna import a nodejs lib so whatever
mature -> lol yolo
optimized -> just cloud all the big data / servers are cheap dood
mature = old and crusty
incredibly simple protocol = it just does plain text
optimized = far past the point where it mattered anymore
see, you got the right idea :blobcatfingerguns2:

properly shit on everything that isn't marketed by corpos.
irc stagnated because no one wanted to break compatbility with the lowest common denominator of features. anyone who tried got screamed out of the room.
I’m in the process of breaking everything