On: Show HN: Experimental chat written in Common Lisp

[erlehmann_]

What I do not understand: Why not write a simple IRC (or even XMPP) client – but an “IRC-like” client? The documentation is out there. Do people feel special when their software is incompatible with older software without having features that make incompatibility a necessity?

Internet Relay Chat: Client Protocol https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2812

Internet Relay Chat: Server Protocol https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2813

[aidenn0 → erlehmann_]

I think many people overestimate how complicated the IRC protocol is. A minimal IRC client is much less work than one would expect.

[azrazalea → aidenn0]

Last time I was thinking about it the number of non-standard extensions combined with there being multiple RFCs involved if you want to support more than minimal features led me not to consider it for my hobby/learning project.

[lerax → erlehmann_]

Thanks for share the IRC's specifications. I wrote this little project just as a exercise of my studies from Common Lisp, basic concepts of multi-threading and TCP/IP sockets.

Sorry if this annoys you. You are correct, would be better implement a well-known protocol for chat like IRC, is unnecessary as you say. But I think is still useful for learning purposes.

Thanks for looking it, anyway.