ZeroBot is a modular, mutli-protocol (originally and primarily IRC) bot. This bot exists primarily for amusement and arbitrary utility, but otherwise serves no major or specific purpose. I created him to bum around in channels and servers that I frequent, so he was originally and always will be a pet project.
ZeroBot is currently being rewritten (again) in Python, and as such will not have any of the previous incarnation's functionality for a little bit.
Here be ramblings about ZeroBot's lifetime. They're not really for anyone in particular aside from myself and a couple friends. You can safely ingore this section; I won't be offended. 😛
This bot was my very first expedition into programming and I have always had a particular fascination and fondness for IRC, so this goofy little bot holds fluffy sentimental meaning to me. The reason for creating ZeroBot in the first place was to learn programming and how the IRC protocol worked.
ZeroBot first came to life back in December 2011, and has undergone many rewrites over the years, in multiple languages. In fact, this is something like the fifth or sixth time I've rewritten him, whether in part or entirely!
I originally wrote ZeroBot in Python, inspired by redroid: the personal bot of Red Eclipse's lead developer, Quinton Reeves. In this genesis, I had clumsily implemented bits of the IRC protocol on an as-needed basis and added simple functionality like responding to chat in absurd ways, small utility functions, and a database to collect humorous, inspiring, or ridiculous-when-out-of-context quotes. He brought much amusement to myself and our tiny IRC channel.
However, over time I grew to dislike Python, and as a result gradually neglect and eventually abandon and disconnect my poor bot for some time. In time, I began to yearn for the deranged antics of my bot and decided to undertake the first of many rewrites to come. I had initially started in C++, as I had always been fond of the language and was my gateway into the programming world. Not far into the rewrite I began to realize that I was still very inexperienced with C++, and things were going very slowly and looking particularly awful, so I gave up that incarnation not long after starting, and it currently remains buried on a drive somewhere.
At around the same time I gave up on the C++ rewrite, I had decided that I wanted to learn Perl, so I did what would end up becoming a personal trend when learning a language: write (or rewrite in this case) an IRC bot! The Perl incarnation of ZeroBot would end up being the furthest I had gotten with the bot's design to this point, even going as far as performing not one, not two, but three separate redesigns and reimplementations before arriving at his current modular design over a few years. There were transitions between Moose and Moo and back again, multiple configuration libraries, structural designs, and an eternal struggle of attempting to whip PoCo::IRC and PoCo::Syndicator into the shape I desired.
There were several periods of off-and-on development, as well as times where ZeroBot was functional and times where he was non-functional. Despite this, his latest design had finally begun to take shape, with the ability to dynamically load and unload individual protocol and feature modules, along with a hand-rolled command parser and templated logging system, and a bastardized configuration system.
Despite this progress, long after switching from Moose to Moo, I began to run into a bug with Moo, and began the annoying process of switching back to Moose. I had been developing on Arch Linux, and each time Perl was updated, it meant that all PerlX modules needed to be recompiled, which in my case were quite a lot. Having never found a way to automate this tedious process correctly, as well as having to deal with it for the hundredth time, I grew irritated and disillusioned with Perl and its module ecosystem and began another period of neglect that lasted 6 months at the time of this writing. Once again, my poor bot would not see life for some time.
Recently, I have fallen a bit in love with Python despite my fledgling opinions from the past. Now armed with more experience and newer outlooks, I began to appreciate and adore Python's amazing standard library and language features. The nagging in the back of my head to continue working on my bot once again resurfaced, but I dreaded going back to fighting my Perl development environment, knowing it would need to be done again all over again in the future. But with some wishful encouragement (read: demands) from my friends to bring my damn bot back into working order and my newfound love for Python, I made the decision to once again rewrite my lovable bot one last time.
This is where stand now: a return to origins; a return to glory. Since I have already spent the time coming up with ZeroBot's current design, and the many libraries and tools available in the Python ecosystem, I predict that I'll be able to get back up to speed in much less time than the Perl version took, and I will finally restore my beloved bot to his former glory and then some. I am determined to bring this brain-damaged bastard back not just to IRC, but Discord, Matrix, and any other protocol. That, and I really would like to not have to manually archive new quotes by hand into an Evernote anymore. 😅
Long live ZeroBot!