I feel sort of ehh the same but also the opposite. I feel with both slack and discord that they are a little better than IRC. But that I so easily can see those features being implemented in IRC and I feel really sad history didn’t go in that direction. What if IRC had became the standard in the same way email did. IRC was so great and I miss it. I know ppl still use it, but I don’t even think I have a client anymore.

Learning to program as a kid in the 90s and getting that 28.8k modem with direct chat access to adults at Apple and later Sun/Java was amazing.