Atte Jauhiainen chatting on IRC at the OTiT Guild Room

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was born at the Department of Information Processing Science of the University of Oulu 30 years ago. Jarkko Oikarinen developed the internet chat system back in 1988 in addition to his summer job. Today, people are still using IRC.



Computer Science student Atte Jauhiainen uses IRC every day. Mostly he chats about everyday topics and occurrences, like lunch dates and news of the day. “There’s a tremendous amount of channels on IRC, and it’s easy to create more. For example events and hobbies can have their own channels,” says Jauhiainen.



Jauhiainen likes to use IRC because it’s a versatile media of communication and can be customized. “IRC is not dependent on any device. You can use it on your phone, computer or even video game console, if you like. Of course also tradition has it’s effect,” he says.



The Guild of Computer Science students (OTiT) uses IRC for everyday communication. “Freshmen will have a compulsory IRC training during autumn semester. I hadn’t used IRC before my studies, but IRC can be useful in our field. Using IRC makes you familiar with the command line of Linux,” Jauhiainen hints.