Internet Relay Chat, better known as IRC, has been running continuously since 1988. That’s longer than the web itself. While most people today use Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp, IRC quietly continues to host thousands of channels where developers, hobbyists, and communities still gather.

Jarkko Oikarinen created IRC in Finland as a way to replace the local BBS messaging system at the University of Oulu. He wanted real-time discussion, multiple channels, and a distributed network that wouldn’t depend on a single server. The protocol he designed was remarkably robust and is still in use, largely unchanged, nearly four decades later.

IRC networks are organized into servers that connect to each other, forming a mesh. Users connect to one server and can join channels hosted anywhere on the network. A channel is just a topic or community, marked with a # symbol like #python or #linux. Anyone can create a channel, and the first person there becomes the operator with moderation powers.

The cultural norms of IRC shaped online communication in ways we still see today. The concept of moderators and channel ops came from IRC. So did the idea of bots that automate tasks and provide services. Even the “/me” command for actions, which shows up in modern chat apps, originated on IRC.

In the 1990s, IRC was how technical communities coordinated. Every open-source project had an IRC channel. If you needed help with Linux or wanted to contribute to a project, you joined their channel and asked questions. Response times were fast because people idled in channels all day, keeping their client open in the background.

The network splits were legendary. Because IRC networks are distributed, servers could lose connection to each other during outages. When that happened, the network would split into two separate networks, each thinking it was the real one. You’d see duplicate nicknames, channels would fracture, and chaos would ensue until the servers reconnected and reconciled the split.

IRC had no built-in file transfer, but users created DCC (Direct Client-to-Client) to send files directly between users. This became huge in the early 2000s when piracy on IRC was rampant. Entire networks were dedicated to serving files through bots. You’d join a channel, message a bot with a specific command, and it would send you movies, music, or software directly.

The lack of logging or persistence was both a feature and a limitation. Nothing was saved by default. If you weren’t online when someone said something, you missed it. This created a real-time urgency but also meant important information could vanish. Some channels ran logging bots to capture conversations, but it wasn’t standard.

IRC culture developed its own norms and etiquette. Don’t flood the channel with rapid-fire messages. Don’t ask if you can ask a question, just ask it. Don’t private message people without permission. These unwritten rules were enforced socially, and violators would get kicked or banned pretty quickly.

The rise of web-based forums and social media should have killed IRC, but it persisted in technical communities. Developers stayed on IRC because it was simple, open, and didn’t require creating an account with a company. It was just a protocol. You could run your own server, create your own client, and nobody could shut you down or monetize your community.

Today IRC is a niche platform, mostly used by open-source projects and privacy-conscious communities. Many projects have moved to Discord or Slack for better user experience and features like message history and multimedia support. But IRC channels still exist for the Linux kernel, Debian, Arch Linux, and countless other projects.

What’s remarkable is how much IRC got right. The distributed architecture means no single company controls the network. The protocol is simple enough that anyone can write a client. Channels are self-organizing and require no central authority. These principles influenced everything from Slack’s channel model to Discord’s server structure.

If you want to experience IRC today, there are modern clients like Hexchat and web gateways that make it accessible without installing software. The Libera.Chat network hosts many open-source projects after a split from Freenode in 2021. Join #python or #linux and you’ll find people ready to help, just like they were 30 years ago.

The technology isn’t flashy or modern, but IRC proves that sometimes the simplest solution is the one that lasts. While corporate chat platforms rise and fall, IRC just keeps running, maintained by volunteers who believe communication shouldn’t require a login, a privacy policy, or a credit card.