I use IRC quite a lot to quickly find the solution for small problems that Google doesn't solve.<p>However all channels are fairly specialized and I sometimes feel the need to discuss more general concepts that span several categories. That is normally not appreciated on IRC, you'll be asked to stay on topic.<p>Hacker news feels like this endless well of knowledge that can be tapped and it would be cool to have a Hacker news channel on IRC.
Apparently #startups on freenode is what most people use.<p>For lisp stuff, you can find a lot of people in ##sicp on freenode.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436479" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436479</a>
I think #startups on irc.freenode.com is more or less the official channel.<p><a href="http://ircstartups.pbwiki.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ircstartups.pbwiki.com/</a>