Yeah, and one of the most important features of IRC being "lightweight native client, integrating seamlessly with my environment". Somehow, these "modern" chat systems just can't do that.
Because that would require opening up either the client or the protocol, both of which are anathema to people trying to make money from those systems.
Being optimized for communication and being optimized for making money are mutually exclusive goals.
I’ve never used IRC before, so I’m honestly curious, what features does IRC have that Slack(/Discord) don’t or can’t have through extensions like bots and plugins?
slack is based on IRC
real time typing in icq was pretty cool. I wonder if any other system ever replicated that?