More than 20 years ago, I was quite fond of IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It coincided with my first experience of the Internet. I believe it was one of the key incentive of selling internet services. I could virtually chat with anyone in the world, in real time. Too bad at the time, the phone bill which the internet relied on was charged by the hour, not flat rate for unlimited usage.
I experimented with it, learned the new world, debated on religions, etc. Wasted a lot of time on it as well. Although, I consider it preferable to movies and the usual American youth hangout (which they are proud of).
Then, when the WWW became popular with Java applets and similar technologies, IRC gradually died out. The peoples connected to the IRC were robots, doing nothing.
Now, after long decades, I stumbled on one of IRC's new network: Freenode. This network is unlike the classics (Undernet, Efnet, Dalnet, etc.). It has all the technically/academia relevant channels and they are very much alive. Just last night, I've learned new ways to solve some simple C++ exercises, and more. In the old days, there were bots that do cool things, even I have once programmed bots such as the Bible bot using mIRC scripting. I must admit, some bots I made were a waste of time - despite the fact that they were well designed. But now, the revelation of this new C++ INTERPRETER on the IRC channel and many other features and experts online could really help me in my study.