All the programmes we've made so far in my studies have been demonstrations of methods. I have not yet made any useful applications. So I figured I'd try to write an IRC client in C. Anyone got any hints or tips on what to do and what not to do?

It depends upon how much do you know about C.first,if your client is GUI you gotta know graphics in C and Mouse programmming.then you got to know how to use key(HOTKEYS) in your client and make that.then for smileys you must know the ascii values etc.

Then finally the most important thing you must know basics(At least)of Sockets programming,for protocol managing etc.

perhaps if you know all these,then we can surely talk.

bye!