The protocol needs ugly extensions to have a variety of devices plug into the same user account. For me back in the day this was an ssh session running the IRC client in a screen, and it was no worse than whatever else was available.
IRC client in screen/tmux is still my gold standard. I like having the same full-fat client on my phone instead of a lesser one. I have scripts and aliases set up in irssi and I can still use those from my phone.