mIRC 7.81

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

New release and ongoing development

  • Several commenters are surprised mIRC is still actively developed; 7.81 (April 9, 2025) is noted as a milestone for ~30‑year‑old, largely solo‑maintained software.
  • Some confusion stems from the main site not clearly dating the front‑page news; multiple people argue the HN post should have linked directly to the news page.

Platform, licensing, and business model

  • mIRC is still proprietary and Windows‑only; some Linux/macOS users mention WINE as a workaround and gripe about ARM Macs.
  • A long subthread revisits the “lifetime license” controversy:
    • One side says early “lifetime” licenses were effectively capped at ~10 years and that this feels like a broken promise.
    • Others report old licenses (2010 and even earlier) still working and note archived FAQs that asked old users to re‑register if they could, or email for a free renewal.
    • It’s unclear what the current policy is; some say the stricter approach has been quietly softened.
  • A few people speculate mIRC likely was, or is, a multi‑million‑dollar business, but this is based on filings and guesswork, not detailed discussion.

mIRC scripting and learning to program

  • Many reminisce that mIRC scripting was their first real programming environment: bots, trivia games, auto‑responses, custom dialogs, even full GUIs and Win32 API hacks.
  • The immediacy (“my friends can use this right now”) is contrasted with more abstract “hello world” learning.
  • People compare today’s equivalents (Roblox scripting, Discord bots) but note higher friction and less openness than raw IRC.

IRC vs Discord, forums, and modern platforms

  • Views on IRC’s health diverge: some call it a “wasteland,” others say tech/science channels and certain networks are still solid.
  • Discord is seen as the de facto replacement for group chat but criticized as a silo, poor archive, and bad substitute for forums.
  • Large tangent on vBulletin‑style forums vs Reddit/HN:
    • Pro‑forum: better long‑term organization, stronger sense of community, no karma‑driven “hivemind,” good for work and niche hobbies.
    • Anti‑forum: huge threads are hard to mine; modern threaded + voting systems surface relevance better.
    • Several note how votes become de facto agreement signals and can suppress unpopular but accurate content; ideas like AI‑based scoring are floated.

Alternative IRC clients and ecosystem

  • For non‑Windows users, HexChat is suggested as a “spiritual successor,” though it is now explicitly abandoned and depends on community patches.
  • Halloy (Rust + iced GUI) is highlighted; some push back on the trend of “X but in Rust” rewrites.
  • Other clients mentioned include irssi, WeeChat, and historic ones like amIRC and KVIRC; one point notes mIRC as having strong IRCv3 support.

Nostalgia, warez, and culture

  • Many share memories: school IRC servers, town‑specific channels, the mIRC connection sound, About‑box easter eggs, scripting “AI” bots, and custom scripts like NoNameScript/ircN.
  • Several recount using mIRC for MP3 and warez trading (DCC, FTP trading rings), early broadband excess, and university or law‑enforcement encounters from that era.
  • There’s a sense that early IRC + forums culture fostered deeper, less gamified conversation than much of today’s social media.