The program at
http://www.plover.com/~mjd/misc/err.pl
demonstrates this. It is a P::C::I application which logs into #mjd
and does two things: it echoes back all convesation on the channel,
and it emits a HOUSEKEEPING message every second.
The console output gets very far ahead of the IRC output; the program
has executed the 'housekeeping' function for the 40th time before the
20th 'HOUSEKEEPING; message appears on the IRC channel. The program
gets similarly behind in processing public conversation. The
irc_public function is called in timely fashion, as soon as anyone
says anything, but delay before the appearanace of the message from
the server echoing what was said gets longer and longer.
