AWK ircbot, usage with ncat is left as an exercise for the reader

ircbot.awk

function message(str) {
    system("sleep 0.1");
    printf("%s\r\n", str);
    printf(">>> %s\n", str) > "/dev/stderr";
    system("sleep 0.1");
}

{
    printf("<<< %s", $0) > "/dev/stderr";
    if (! initialized) {
        message(sprintf("USER %s %s %s :%s", nick, nick, serv, nick));
        message(sprintf("NICK %s", nick));
        message(sprintf("JOIN #%s", chan));
        initialized = 1;
    }
}

$2 == "PRIVMSG" && $4 ~ /^:!uptime.*/ {
    "uptime" | getline uptime;
    message(sprintf("PRIVMSG %s :%s", $3, uptime));
    message("");
    close("uptime");
}

$2 == "PING" {
    message("PONG");
    message("");
}