In what way is its functionality "nearly the same as Slack"? Or are people these days just using Slack as a generic term for "channel-based chat" without acknowledging the long history of chat apps? (In which case I would argue it is much closer to the functionality of IRC, if still significantly short of it).
I was pitching a related concept to a young investor lately, and she had not heard of IRC. If you stick around long enough, all that is old is new again. If you can profit from this, it's great. If you can't, it is a source of frustration.
I agree that Slack is much more featureful, but I fail to see what critical piece of IRC functionality is missing ? If anything, you don't need a bouncer for chat history with suc, so it's more featureful than IRC.
With that said, I seldom used IRC so this is a genuine question for people who used it and miss some features.
It's been years since I used/administered IRC, but I also think there are common misconceptions about what IRC actually is. At it's core, IRC is an incredibly basic tool, and most of the end-user features come from layering additional services on top of IRC, both at the client and server levels. These services can be pretty complex and cumbersome to manage, and in my opinion, never quite seem to solve the problem exactly. Persistent chat history is certainly the most glaring example.
At the risk of becoming a meme, it's similar to how practically nobody uses Linux alone; it's almost universally accompanied by something like GNU.
