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The debate I keep having is whether early IRC channels (where I learned PHP tricks in 1997) were better than modern forums for solving coding problems.
I found that asking a direct question in #php on EFnet got me a working script in under 10 minutes, but the trade-off was wading through endless ASCII art and trolls, whereas forums like WebmasterWorld gave slower but more reliable answers with no flame wars - which approach actually taught you more back then?
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wyattbennett7d ago
Oh sure, nothing like getting a working script in 10 minutes and only having to sift through 50 lines of "your mom" jokes and someone pasting a swastika made of asterisks first. Really taught me the value of patience.
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casey9437d ago
irc.efnet 6667. Port 6667. I still remember that number. Funny thing nobody mentions is the IRC crowd forced you to learn troubleshooting on the fly. You had to paste your code, explain the error, and interpret the fix without any threading or upvotes. That real-time pressure made things stick in your head way better than reading a solved thread weeks later. Forums taught you to search and be patient. IRC taught you to think fast and talk to strangers who might be jerks but knew their stuff. Both approaches taught different skills, but IRC definitely built thicker skin faster.
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Man, I still remember trying to debug Perl scripts on DALnet, what a mess that was.
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