Saustrup

I miss the #internet of the early #90s; the highlight probably being #IRC - #Internet Relay #Chat. The internet hadn't really made it into the average Danish home at this point, so getting access meant you'd have to be a student loitering at school or someone working at a large computer company or telco. Although I've been chatting with these people for ages - some for decades - there are still some I haven't met face to face yet. Once in a rare while it happens, but mostly unexpected as I don't visit IRC that often any more. One turned out to be a coworker. Another turned out to be my department head. Weird how that goes.

Here's thing I found on the 'Tubes that describes the whole thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UbKenFipjo

Internet Relay Chat.

YouTube
Oct 8 at 6:58amWeb
Show threadCarstenOct 8

@saustrup I used to play online political roleplaying games - specifically something called #CyberNations - and we had so much fun on IRC.

Everyone organized themselves in alliances and used IRC for daily comms. Haven't used it since, probably, 2006.

Show threadSaustrupOct 8
@EvilCartyen IRC was the gateway to knowledge, meetups, parties and I even found a partner there! 🙂
Show threadCarstenOct 8

@saustrup yeah, I had a girl from cybernations and irc fly to Denmark for a weekend too.

IRC - helping nerds get laid!

Show threadSaustrupOct 8
@EvilCartyen It was a beautiful thing :-)
Show threadJens RohdeOct 8

@saustrup IRC was a blast. Or at least the few channels I followed (#danmark being the one I frequented most).

Luckily I still talk with a few of the lovely nerds from back then :)

Show threadSaustrupOct 8
@svabonius I just arrived there in a puff of smoke. #IRCnet, I assume? 🙂
Show threadJens RohdeOct 8
@saustrup I think so. It is many moons ago... :)
Show threadcosOct 8
@saustrup as many mentioned already, IRC continues as Matrix for modern folk. You can even use command line clients if you want oldschool experience. It's open standard like IRC so anyone can write clients, bots or even servers.
Show threadSaustrupOct 8
@cos Aaaaaw, a command line client for Matrix might be just what I crave! :-)
Show threadSaustrupOct 8
@cos Found gomuks - while the text version seems to be somewhat deprecated, it does look very charming :-) https://github.com/gomuks/gomuks/tree/master
GitHub - gomuks/gomuks at master

A Matrix client written in Go. Contribute to gomuks/gomuks development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadMichael KnudsenOct 8
@saustrup in general that channel is a gold mine for us who experienced 1990s internet.