🍸 Landed here by accident? This is the story of why I went back to IRC after eighteen years — and how grappa, the client I wrote to stay there, came out of it. Click here to go back to 1995 →
In 1988 a Finn named Jarkko Oikarinen, with the tools and the technology of the day, invented Internet Relay Chat, IRC: a spare yet intricate system that became the first “chat” on the internet to catch on for real. You pick a pseudonym, you get on the network, you walk into a room where there are other pseudonyms, and everyone can send messages to the room or privately (they’re called “queries”). Not that different from a WhatsApp or Telegram group. But in 1990.
In 1999, IRC was my first way in to contacts, people and knowledge — which later turned into real friendships, passions and work. My first experience of “smart working” dates back to 2002, when together with other IRC enthusiasts we put together a modification to IRC itself, one that let you exchange messages encrypted, and therefore “secure” and impossible to intercept.
That experience was software engineering work, spontaneous coordination with other people, and collaborative open source work all at once — and it went beyond the single IRC network I was part of. My first experience “at medium scale”, beyond the small company I worked for by day back then. At night, I worked on IRC, for IRC.
In 2008 a friend of mine told me “come on, get yourself a Facebook, it’s like IRC” — but it does so much more. And in fact, Facebook back then looked a lot like FriendFeed, and it had plenty of room for immediate interaction, back and forth: in the comments section, say, where new ones showed up in strictly chronological order, instantly.
In 2008 I abandoned IRC for Facebook and other social media, because they “offer so much more” and “allow so many more interactions”. Then came WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, and doomscrolling — where it’s no longer interaction between people, it’s just passive consumption and collective mind-numbing, engineered to show you as many ads as possible.
In 2026, AI arrives. To me, it’s a multiplier. With AI, given my skills in the field, I can build any program that comes into my head, because I know what’s needed, I know how these things work, I know what matters when you build them, and I know how to make them grow and evolve without collapsing under their own weight.
That’s how, in April, I got my hands back on that old 2002 source code — the code I spent my nights on IRC writing, to make IPv6 and SSL-encrypted connections work. And I asked Claude to put it back in order, that source, still buried in a digital vault on sourceforge.net. And once it was open again, I felt that pull once more, that same passion that kept me up at night 20 years earlier.
That’s how Grappa was born, my IRC client. My program for IRC, the one that makes it comfortable, current, easy to use, up to date with the times — BUT without denaturing what IRC is: a text-only chat. No images, no voice messages, no blue ticks, no “is typing…”, and no corporation behind it deciding how and when you’re allowed in.
IRC is the internet of the early days: spare, complicated and imperfect, made by people who, out of some strange inner pull, took pleasure in choosing a pseudonym, transliterating themselves into words, and reading other words from other people hidden behind other pseudonyms. And out of words come communities, and out of communities come projects and lives lived.
Since April, since I came back to IRC, I find myself reaching for social media far less. I’ve gone back to preferring the spare, dry communication of back then — the kind that leaves more room for the imagination, and doesn’t drown you in lights and colours and notifications and ads. Which is why I’m not all that active on Facebook, Instagram and friends any more.
I’m on IRC. If you want to find me, you can use the program I built. Go to grappa.chat and you’ll get a preview. If you like what you see, click “Try it now”, type in your pseudonym (nickname) and click “connect”. From there, walk into the first room that shows up on the next screen. :-)
Nostalgia? Maybe. But also a return to the roots. To which I owe a lot.
See you on IRC :-)
🍸 grappa is live. Pick a name, walk into a chatroom with one click, and you’re back in 1995 — no app to install, no account. Get on IRC — grappa.chat → · the why →