>an insular club of engineers with a high bar of entry
and all the teenagers in all the high-schools who otherwise had no affinity with computers whatsoever.
/slap
But that was 20 years ago, of course. You can't compare the technical prowess of a random kid back then with a current well-paid software professional with access to portable hardware 100s of times more powerful.
Not everyone who works in a major corporation are tech literate, nor do they want to be. IRC is not a great program for those folks who have such simple requests as "save my history and show it as I switch devices" (due to then requiring a bouncer, etc.)
There's a reason Mozilla moved away from IRC, and it wasn't that "their engineers couldn't figure out IRC".
and all the teenagers in all the high-schools who otherwise had no affinity with computers whatsoever.
/slap
But that was 20 years ago, of course. You can't compare the technical prowess of a random kid back then with a current well-paid software professional with access to portable hardware 100s of times more powerful.