Hypothesis: the vibrancy of a framework’s IRC channel is proportional to the amount of time that the framework takes to start up each time you tweak your code or settings and need it reloaded.

Further hypothesis: this relationship is non-linear. My guess is that frameworks which take, say, four seconds to restart probably get no more IRC attention than frameworks which take two seconds to restart, so adding mere seconds of delay to your framework’s startup routine is not going to generate thriving community. There is, instead, a threshold — probably around ten or twelve seconds — above which the delay feels so long that the developer can, in good conscience towards their employer, switch over into IRC during a restart without feeling like they hurt their productivity.