I’ve been back on IRC over the last year or 2 and been enjoying it. It’s obviously not as wildly active as it used to be, but you still find very smart people to answer questions and/or chat about random stuff, and most of the big open source projects have large channels which can be interesting to hang out in.
I haven't used IRC regularly since forever ago, but I've tried to get back into lately. Problem is, some of the channels I join, there's zero chat going on. I see a lot of users, so maybe they're all just messaging directly to each other?
-- prefer not to say what channels, but they're related to certain programming languages.
A lot of IRC channels have sporadic activity at best. Most regulars just have their IRC client open and in a lot of channels all day. When conversation happens they'll join in.
