Ask HN: Do you learn a lot from IRC?

13 points by joeclef 11 years ago | 12 comments

I just set up an IRC and I was curious to see what you guys think of it in terms of learning opportunities? Would you say that Stack Overflow is more useful and/or better? Thanks

theGREENsuit 11 years ago |

I've used IRC a handful of times and the greatest benefit is having instant answers to a problem that may be very specific to my environment. I try not to use IRC unless I'm stuck on something I can't find in SO first. The only times I'll try IRC is when I feel I've tried hard to solve the issue without success. Most of my issues have been solved by SO. I could be missing out on a great way to learn but I feel if I was on IRC I'd be asking too many questions and not digging for the answers myself.

SEJeff 11 years ago |

Most all open source developers are on IRC. I find my productivity goes WAY up when I can talk directly to the developers of some software I'm trying to use or extend.

chippy 11 years ago |

All new users to IRC need to understand that there is a loose etiquette to asking questions.

In general for help this may assist someone: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

and for IRC - this may help: http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxHelpAsk.html

In my experience the two main points

1) "Don't ask to ask, just ask". Which means don't type "can I ask a question about Hacker News please?" just go ahead and type your question!

2) Don't ask if someone is there to help. Instead of typing "Can someone help me with a bug about Hacker News?" just go ahead and type about the bug!

and a lesser point, now that many IRC rooms are less busy than they once were, is to wait for an answer. If need be, repeat your question in a few hours.

Now - the benefit of IRC in asking questions is the rapid narrowing down of what the question actually is. This sounds simple, but it's a crucial part of bug finding, and help giving, the helper has to know what you are asking.

Rainymood 11 years ago | |

The two main points sound counter-intuitive to newcomers (like myself). You think it's polite to ask 'Can I ask you a question' and you get a 'rude' reply with 'Geez, just ask the question'.

I just want to add 3) IRC is not like whatsapp/fb chat, you are allowed to ask longer sentences.

The instant replies are also nice and feel more human.

ErikRogneby 11 years ago |

Stack overflow I think of more as: "I have this piece of broken code and can't figure out what's wrong".

IRC is great for "how would I go about doing X".

matthewarkin 11 years ago |

I've learned quite a bit from IRC (mostly in #stripe). Though the learning has been way more indirect since I spend most of my time helping others. So people would ask "how do I do X?" and the learning comes from researching ways to do that and evaluating the pros and cons of each. The second way that I've just learned is by getting exposure to how a ton of people have integrated certain aspects.

Stack overflow is great for solving individual bugs (which definitely works in some IRC rooms), while IRC is more of a "how to do something" or "why should I do it this way" type of environment

hoverbear 11 years ago |

IRC is central to my development as a companion to searching the web. In IRC you can have real time discussion and get good, immediate leads on problems too arcane for Stack Overflow et al.

spdustin 11 years ago |

IRC has definitely been a great place for me to learn from and interact with the developers of OSS. Not too long ago, I had a strange un-googleable (that's a word now, I insist) error in Canvas LMS (an open source learning management system), and ended up in a dialog with one of the developers. Turned out to be an obscure (to me, anyway) 32/64-bit bug that I wouldn't have ever figured out on my own, and I contributed a patch to fix it. A great experience.

jpgvm 11 years ago |

If you are interested in contributing to OSS then IRC is basically a must. Get yourself connected to freenode.net, irc.mozilla.org and irc.oftc.net to start with. Join channels related to your operating system, programming language and frameworks of choice.

Just lurking will probably teach you a bunch but you should try to interact and become part of the community.

nso95 11 years ago |

I've personally never found IRC useful for learning. People seem generally uninterested in helping with problems.

soyiuz 11 years ago |

I have been using IRC on and off since the nineties. In the past few years, I usually enter a channel, ask a question, wait to make sure no one answers (nobody does), then move on to stack exchange or reddit to actually get some interaction.

spacemanmatt 11 years ago |

Sometimes SO has the answer, but I can almost always get a better discussion of the answer and surrounding topic on IRC. I can also get help on IRC when I don't know how to search for the solution or evaluate multiple solutions.