It brought me the joys of learning how to program while trying to write some tcl scripts for eggdrop bots and goofing around in a shell setting up said bot.
Every time I think of IRC I get this nostalgic feeling of the good old times when communities were vibrant. It was so much easier to just hop on gamesurge or quakenet and find people to game with, organize pugs, find random channels where you can discuss things that interest you, and of course your favorite local's city mingle spot.
I made some good friends from my local city's IRC channel in the early 2000s that I still talk to this day.
I feel as though communities aren't as strong as they used to be as IRC has been slowly losing its population. It just had this quick and fluid way of hopping channels and finding people with similar interests. Listing all of the channels with their user count, and seeing what's popular, or even creating your own channel and community was so empowering.