IRC or Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for internet communication via simple text messages.

See living internet at https://www.livinginternet.info/r/r.htm for history, working concept, usage and more.

See irssi's new users guide at https://irssi.org/New-users/

Connect via a client such as irssi
IRC is ephemeral in nature. Use it to hash out stuff, move the interesting/useful bits to another, more permanent medium.

Taken from https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/24/A-philosophy-for-instant-messaging.html

A general primer is available at https://geoff.greer.fm/2012/05/19/programmer-irc-etiquette/

See https://man.sr.ht/chat.sr.ht/etiquette.md on a thorough guide from sourcehut on IRC etiquette

https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/ is also useful when asking questions

When you have to send someone a highlight (mention them), send along context in the same message. This makes it so they don't have to look for the context in another bit of chat log.

Find channels with https://netsplit.de and

#oldcomputerchallenge people using lo-end computers daily