As someone who was very active on IRC back in the day and is now forced to use Discord (because that's where certain communities are now), from a design and user perspective Discord is so much worse. It's like looking at something that was designed by 14 year old boys pounding oreos, Mellow Yellow, and adderall. Like it was built by "the Carver."

I am comparing IRC protocol with discord. For valid comparison you need to compare IRC servers with discord, and many of them were operated by scummy people.