I use IRC every day, in fact it's the best way to communicate for techies IMHO, focus on the content and no gif, emoji, images and all other nuisances that you'd get on any other platforms. I've written my https://projects.malikania.fr/irccd/ bot for various tasks. Long live IRC.

I wrote my own IRC this last weekend just for fun, i hope they stay around :)

client or server?

it is a client with my own tiny backend, great question, opened my eyes to more possibilities for my program