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Ask HN: Is there something as good / better as IRC for programming questions?

27 points by TekMol ↗ HN
When I write code and have a question about - say - Python, I go to IRC in the Python channel and ask.

The experience is crazy good. Lot's of helpful (even though socially unapt) people who know Python in and out.

But I rarely read anything about IRC anywhere these days. Is there something new that offers the same functionlity?

I know many people use StackOverflow. But IRC is so much nicer, as you can have an instant conversation.

23 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 64.6 ms ] thread
john_the_writer
No.. I see IRC melting away, but it's still so much nicer.

Slack has filled some of the gaps for me. I join groups of devs in my area, and I get to not only snag answers to questions, but network locally as well.

KSPAtlas
Someone will always be running an IRC server, so it will never completely die.
gaws
> No.. I see IRC melting away, but it's still so much nicer.

IRC is not going anywhere.

speedgoose
I’m not sure. All current IRC users will die eventually so unless it becomes cool and attractive for new generations, it may be insignificant in a few decades.
gaws
> All current IRC users will die eventually so unless it becomes cool and attractive for new generations, it may be insignificant in a few decades.

False. There are still young people getting into IRC as an alternative to Discord.

Discord will likely die first after $BIG_TECH_COMPANY acquires it and runs it to the ground.

bjourne
As long as you have the wherewithal to tolerate all the nasty users IRC can be really good. Comp.lang.python is gold too.
orf
The Python (and other languages) discord servers are the place to be.
llanowarelves
Can you post a couple of the ones you like?
rg111
I really love the Racket discord. Very warm, welcoming, and helpful.

The Rust discord is also a nice place.

no_time
The löve2D discord is very lövely :) It's THE place to be if you like to move pixels on the screen with a super clean API and a no frills, elegant language.
gompertz
I'd actually like to see a service where you can hire a single person to answer all your questions. We have guitar and violin lessons where you go and practice then come back with questions - why not the same for programming languages? I'd gladly pay some one on a ad-hoc basis instead of filtering out all the noise on IRC/Discord.
hnthrowaway0315
I think you can hire training. It's available everywhere and some have reasonable prices. If you have specific programming language questions you can probably consult Stackoverflow or Reddit which are free.
brianhorakh
Its usually less work to find the answer yourself than it is to try and find+hire someone for an hour.

The person who spends time selling themselves is not working/learning during that time. Their billable rate would be astronomical.

The curse of narrow specialization.

commandersaki
Hans Reiser used to charge $25 to ask any kernel related question. I used it once since I was having trouble creating a partition table for a >2TB drive back when GPT partition tables were in their infancy. Needless to say I didn't get a satisfactory answer. But for $25 it wasn't a big deal.
cercatrova
I do this, via Upwork contracts. It's very helpful.
IshKebab
Have you actually tried StackOverflow? You get answers at a similar speed to IRC and it's much better for obscure questions - on IRC you'll just get nobody knowing the answer but on StackOverflow you will at least maybe get an answer in a few days/weeks/years.

But be warned, it's filled with similarly socially inept people and they can downvote/close your perfectly reasonable questions so be prepared for a decent amount of rage.

Even so it's definitely better than IRC IMO.

torstenvl
In my experience, Stack Overflow is only good for "language lawyer" questions. Any straightforward practical questions get some variation of "stfu n00b" and any non-straightforward practical questions get ignored.

Example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69111001/automatic-file-...

hnthrowaway0315
I think reddit is more suitable for specific topics. Stackoverflow has the issue that you simply cannot send an open ended question because it is "opinion-based", however most questions I encounter in work, once I get over the basic language stuff, are open ended questions. For example:

- Given these constraints, how would you design you system?

- Can you please give a few examples of previous work done on topic X?

JohnHaugeland
This is moving to Discord, which is largely web IRC
brianhorakh
For foss: Matrix.org, reddit, irc

For biz sponsored projects: zulip, gitter, slack, yammer

For crypto: discord, telegram

ksaj
I use sdf.org. There is a chat system that covers the same kinds of things that irc covers. It is less chaotic than irc, and definitely has old fashioned vibes (it even has a lot of gopher!).

Nntp is still an ugly mess though. More spam than I've ever seen before.

srer
IRC's influx of new users has been dropping off for a long time.

Personally I started using IRC 20 years ago, there were a lot of new users then.

The big IRCnets were massive[a] compared to today[b]. Today libera.chat is the biggest, but slowly dropping.

End result? IRC provides me direct access to a community that's ancient, with a notable lack of less experienced users. This is exceptionally helpful, I don't need a giant community to engage with, a few users with decades of experience in the topic I'm interested in is enough to answer almost all my questions :).

As such I would be rather surprised if there was a better option for real time answers.

I imagine usenet is a similar experience. An even older community with little influx of new users, ergo an even higher median experience level.

I expect I'll use IRC until I die, I can't say that for many things in technology.

[a] https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2003 [b] https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php