This reminds me of the time I just learned how to write .bat scripts for Windows, when I was a teenager.
The power of being able to send this file via msn to a friend, convince them to open it, and then get a full message in capitals of "YOU HACKED ME! MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN!" Before watching them go offline (the script shut down their computer after 30 seconds) was a real heart racer. I am sure it contributed to my interest in computers in the following years.
This was a lot of fun to read and really tells the story well. I am thoroughly amused. Thanks for sharing this!
This article taught me nothing about managing people I can't fire and I was really hoping to take something from this. I've had this happen before (and it may happen again) so I'm disappointed that this just ending up being "if you want to fire someone, and your boss doesn't let you, you'll probably quit".
It taught me that some managers feel that they're absolutely 99% right when they feel like firing someone. Managers are so good and firing is so hard that managers only feel this way when it's 99% justified.
Damn it Bosch. They usually make great tools and appliances and it looks like they're instead following the path of "subscribe for the basic features" scams.
I can't help but think my solution to this would be, to start hand washing the dishes, out of pure spite.
So the first sentence is fact and then it veers into wild unsubstantiated predictions (egg prices never spike that high for Easter, the journalist is delusional).
For the average user, absolutely it's voice and game streaming. But I've found the more I've used discord, is that a lot of online communities, that typically would exist on Reddit or a forum, also have discord servers for communicating and community management.
I have noticed it’s frequently the only outlet for communication with developers and communities, which I find worryingly closed off and hostile to users.
Just to clarify, when I say "hostile to users", I just mean generally "less accessible than alternatives". I'm not making any value judgments about how we treat one another using said access, which I don't imagine is any great panacea.
I'm sorry, I didn't understand, are you claiming that gamers (perhaps one of the most notoriously toxic communities) are not hostile towards game developers?
Ahhh context was missing. I meant in actual game development discords for game developers, not games that have discords from the developers.
My anecdotal data is based on observations from my partner who has boughten several asset packs from itch.io, got on the discord for support, and the artists/game devs have been extremely unwelcoming to the point of just banning users for simple game dev questions and/or mentions of AI.
Of course, gamers (competitive) are generally a toxic bunch.
> extremely unwelcoming to the point of just banning users for simple game dev questions and/or mentions of AI.
This is understandable when you realize that artist are being accused of using AI for every single imperfection in art now. You messed up on perspective? You must be using AI. Anatomy is slightly off? You must be using AI. At a certain point they just get tired of the accusations and choose to ban people.
I can believe that scenario, but I believe in the cases I've seen regarding game dev, It's more pearl clutching from the artists (rightly so) rather than accusations from the asset users.
Not in my experience, either on Discord or any other platform where devs interact with users. Most users are polite enough, but many are toxic as hell; whereas most devs are maybe, at best, brusque - but you would be too if you had to constantly point users to the FAQ or answer the same obvious questions that Google can answer in 5 seconds.
I don’t spend much time on Discord servers (mostly just use it for DM with specific people) but certainly spent a lot of time on IRC in the 90s / early 00s; are channel bots not a thing? Especially now with LLM APIs and all that, you’d imagine a lot of the FAQ-level questioning would have automated answers in busy project-based servers
Bots are still a thing, certainly, but much like in IRC, they're still usually triggered by devs (of course some users will use them, but then, those aren't the users who need to be pointed to the FAQ)
There's also stuff like server intro guides and onboarding steps that should deal with most of the low-hanging questions... Should, but don't always :P
As for use of LLMs... probably an interesting use-case, but I'm not aware of any solutions using that quite yet.
Okay but I don't blame users for that particular failing - topics are not easily discoverable. They should be shown above the input bar the first time a user visits a channel or until they dismiss it or something.
As opposed to IRC? Forums? hell - even an email list... All things that are a lot easier to search then Discord, have much lighter clients, and can be done free.
Do you really think there was 'no way to communicate' for projects before discord ?
You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client. There's a reason they 'just' use Discord. So now you want developers to have to check emails, IRC, forum posts, whatever other outdated communication platform, AND Discord? Why on Earth would they use all that when Discord takes care of all of those features and more.
Having more than one central place to communicate is 'hostile'.
>>You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client
I'd hardly call discord a 'stream lined' system. Latency (especially in voice which is supposed to be it strong suit) is bad, search is subpar compared to even simple google searches, information is silo'd, its yet another place that can potentially leak PII, and basically the network is a SPOF. SourceForge promised all you mention, and was backed by (at the time) the largest IPO in history..and lasted what 2-3 years before it started decaying? I remember projects scrambling to find hosting after SF - and I remember how fast everyone jumped on GitHub .. I was donating to GH from the beginning just to help prevent another SF scenario...
As for it 'hostile' - its a lot easier to do a google search and find all sorts of information streams about something, rather then having to figure out the discord server for a project, search the discord server, and still miss any info. from outside of discord. That seems more 'hostile' to me then less wall-garden systems.
Edit: last I knew, over 1K oss projects still maintain libera.chat channels
In 2025, a company using IRC to communicate with its users would be like using ham radio. Sure it exists, but it is far too niche to be worth the effort.
How so? You literally just open a web page, and choose a nickname. It's easier than creating a Discord account and verifying your email address and phone number.
Discord has a gradual onboarding process. If your IP isn't poisoned, and your browser looks pretty normal, you just have to enter a username and you're in with an "unclaimed account"
They'll then nag you to fill in more details as you use it. It's honestly a pretty slick way of doing onboarding.
To "lose face" with a team shows a lack of trust. I think it's fine if you don't have a perfect solution, but require some eyes on your work. But you're right, if you don't have people your level (or better yet, more experienced) reviewing your work, getting an honest code review is challenging.
The power of being able to send this file via msn to a friend, convince them to open it, and then get a full message in capitals of "YOU HACKED ME! MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN!" Before watching them go offline (the script shut down their computer after 30 seconds) was a real heart racer. I am sure it contributed to my interest in computers in the following years.
This was a lot of fun to read and really tells the story well. I am thoroughly amused. Thanks for sharing this!