@katzenmann ok actually let's be more constructive here. in order to embrace things designed in this era you have to understand the mindset exemplified by 90s unix, nowaydays mostly only surviving in older linux tools and the core systems of the BSDs.

IRC is basically a clunky but simple text protocol created with the mindset that parsing complicated things is scary because hand-rolling parser code in C is fragile, and maintaining lots of state is _very_ expensive in addition to the protocol overhead, like just the overhead of user connection state tables mattered to the self-hosters of the era, not to mention the overhead of running various services. using something like XML for the protocol would have been considered stupid levels of overhead.

people also made clunky shit up on the spot because CS knowledge was much more unevenly distributed: see PHP.

but the thing is you can just read RFC 1459 and completely understand the protocol because the design is very mechanical and simple, there's absolutely zero fancy architectures or algorithms involved and the bookkeeping is only as big as it has to be. if you find it complicated you are probably overthinking it or expecting the wall of text to be describing something much more complicated and modern than it actually is