2000 words of post-hoc fallacy about an IRC channel.<p>We're discussing here a group of people who started their careers dead smack in the middle of the dot-com bubble, practically all of them in software/network security, a field that has stayed valuable since its inception. <i>Of course</i> they've done well for themselves.<p>This would be interesting if the denizens of #w00w00 had, say, invested in each other's companies. But as I understand it (I was a #!r00t person; our biggest win was ISSX) that's not at all what happened.<p>Sorry to sound pissy. I'm just hoping to forestall another goofy HN conspiracy theory; the idea that w00w00 is, like, the Internet's "Skull & Bones". No.<p>Also, I suspect the stories about w00w00 as a "hacking group" that broke into people's machines: total BS.
Shawn Fanning was part of tons of "crews" on EFNet. Just like anybody else who was on irc at the time.<p>Before WhatsApp's purchase, the "napster on irc" byline was, #winprog taught him all he knew about winsock programming and without #winprog napster would never have been made.<p>Now suddenly it's "without #w00w00, napster would never have been made" because this combined with WhatsApp's purchase lets someone write some 1500+ word article about nothing.<p>I wonder what would have happened if TetriNET ended up selling for millions back in the day, would that have suddenly become the irc hackers made bajillions byline?<p>And surprise surprise, people who used one of the more technical communications medium back in the 90s end up being technical people when they grew up.
As an aside, do anyone here still use IRC regularly? It seems some open source projects have permanent channels, but I don't know how active these are.<p>Haven't really used IRC since the mid-90s, but perhaps it's a good way to connect to other developers? Is there a representative YC channel?
It's weird the way like-minded people somehow all find each other. There are several HN members along with myself who have ended up running bootstrapped SaaS businesses to make their living, who all played the same MUD (the text-based precursor to MMORPGs you could telnet into) in the 1990s/2000s. Creating "zmud triggers" to automate parts of that game was probably some of the earliest programming we all did.
my co-founder and myself met similarly through IRC, but we never exchanged irl names. Much much later, by coincidence, we ended up in the same grad school program and that's how we started our company<p>I think at a certain age/time, you tend to spend more time with friends rather than family and that's when it begins to happen. For non-hackers it's when they develop lifelong friends in work or school, for hackers/internet-people that's when you start thinking of your ICQ/IRC/fandom/LJ/pick your ancient platform as your true friends even if you've never met in person.
1/2 of my full time employment opportunities came from other w00w00 members. I was also a member of ADM.<p>I was 17 and managing servers during the first dotcom boom when you needed more than just smarts to create a startup. You needed a boatload of VC money.<p>If w00w00 was formed in present day, half of us would have been funded by YC. We were just smart and young people at the start of this internet thing. Not surprising we went on to make internet companies.<p>This article does leave out a lot of people and includes someone that shouldn't be included.
i literally spend years on irc in the late 90s/early 00s but it was mostly gaming related (quake). Still have some contacts from that time though and since a few years i use irc again for several open source projects, which is often great to get quick feedback on questions.