ircclient
IRC is great, much better than Slack and so I think everyone should use it over other messaging systems like Slack.
RFC2812
Identifying Yourself
Once connected to identify yourself to the server Command: USER
USER guest 0 * :Friendly Name
Then use NICK to register your nickname... this
not the same as talking to NickServ!
Command: NICK
NICK drcrane
You can issue this command at other times to change your nick.
NickServ may object to your nickname and will tell you so like this:
:NickServ!NickServ@services. NOTICE drcrane :This nickname is registered.
Your nick may be forcefully changed for you:
:drcrane!~guest@rdns.hostname NICK :Guest1
Now your nickname is Guest1... but you can change
it at any time by issuing NICK to the server.
Responding to Server Messages
Most clients will understand and respond to some messages so that the server can identify your client and so that the server can check you are still connected.
Two very important ones are PING and PONG. the server may say something like this:
PING :irc.ircserver.com
You should respond as soon as you can with:
PONG :irc.ircserver.com
The :irc.ircserver.com is just copied from the PING
message.