I had a c++ question the other day, and as usual, when I get really stuck on something and I just can't find the answer- I ask Paul. Then I had a thought... I bet there's an irc channel that I could ask this on- and sure enough, there's #programming on irc. I logged on, asked my question and BOOM! - got an answer. Cool. I usually use newsgroups for this, but that's too damn slow- so irc is great for that. Then I poked around a little bit, and found #c, #c++, #objc, and #java. I've been able to help out a bit on #java, but I've mostly just been lurking on #c++ and #c. I've been avoiding irc for years- but it looks like I might just get sucked into it now.