5 ms·

Once you tried Discord you wonder why people are still using Slack. Btw, Discord also surpassed Slack in traffic on SimilarWeb.

empath75 9y ago
Do you use discord at work?
- tosh 9y ago
  Discord feels very responsive and lightweight. Anyone knows what their stack looks like?
  - marcelfahle 9y ago
    Electron
  - TkTech 9y ago
    They have some fantastic dev blogs[1]. Their backend seems to mostly be elixir. 1: https://blog.discordapp.com/tagged/engineering https://blog.discordapp.com/tagged/engineering
  - thejosh 9y ago
    Elixir for the backend, they have around 5 million concurrent users.
  - notamy 9y ago
    Elixir for the backend as others have said, and the frontend is React on Electron.
- lmm 9y ago
  I do for outside-asking-for-help. At my current client internal communications have to be self-hosted so neither Slack nor Discord is an option; if I were still at the startup where I worked previously (where teams chose their own tools) I'd certainly be pushing Discord.
notheguyouthink 9y ago
Do you find Discord to perform better than Slack? Any thoughts as to why? I've used Discord for gaming related purposes on another computer, but it didn't feel... "better" to me. Sluggish at times, but in understandably large rooms with lots of traffic. I'm mainly curious in your statement as to how Discord performs compared to Slack, and if better, how they achieve "better".
- bathtub 9y ago
  Onboarding is a millions times easier. With Slack you need for every chat a new login/password and 100 clicks for sign-up, skip tutorial and email-verification, WTH why? Getting users into Discord is one single click. With Discord you have one login and you can have different names per server. And Slacks admin pages are just a confusing pile of mess, my .vimrc is light-weight compared. Slack is so overrated and people just use it because everybody does. Discord has never been sluggish for me. However, both are timewasters.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    > Slack is so overrated and people just use it because everybody does. Sidenote, I use it because the integrations take a burden off of me. Ie, my CI might not have integrations for Discord. My CI has plugins, and do those have integrations for Discord too? Etcetc. Being the most popular is not always just due to "we use it because everyone does". Personally, I dislike how expensive Slack is. I'm not sure if I prefer Slack over Discord or not, but even if I preferred Discord, I'd still choose Slack for the integrations that I don't have to write myself.
    - bathtub 9y ago
      > My CI has plugins, and do those have integrations for Discord too? Yes and if not there is a Slack-compatible API, check Discord's API doc. Just try Discord, takes one minute and will know yourself if you like it. It's not a behemoth like Slack.
      - 9y ago
sandGorgon 9y ago
It is even more surprising that by just adding a few privacy features, they can start targeting the corporate market. I would gladly pay them.
- developer2 9y ago
  Privacy is a huge concern. It's difficult to phrase this properly without sounding like an asshole, but Discord's development team has a lot of very young people (no proof, but I'd swear some of them are 13-16 years old). If you've ever listened in on their Discord voice channels, the level of immaturity is astounding. Power to them - it's great to see talented youth create a great product. I just wouldn't trust them with a business's confidential information. Discord's specifics aside, it blows my mind that people use any off-site SAAS for internal communications, including Slack. The database set contains so much critical information, including infrastructure passwords, private SSL and SSH certs, etc. Employees will send anything and everything over the company's chat client. Even if you trust the company's employees and general security, the fact remains that your uploaded attachments typically have a public URL not requiring authentication to download.
  - sandGorgon 9y ago
    The technology is there to solve this. End to end encryption solves this problem and lets the devs wash their hands off the privacy concerns.
    - mi100hael 9y ago
      End-to-end encryption is essentially useless/unsolved when it comes to large, dynamic groups like Slack channels. Any new member who joined wouldn't be able to see any history in any channel.
      - bathtub 9y ago
        But this is not a problem of Discord but of all group chats. The initial discussion point was that Discord might be insecure because of young hackers building the product.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
It's a wonder that any of these services enjoy success when IRC exists.
- res0nat0r 9y ago
  There are a million more embedded features in Slack than there are in IRC. Sure someone could spend a year trying to implement all of those plugins in their private IRC server and it be less functional and user friendly, but why would someone want to waste their time and money doing that?
- Spoom 9y ago
  As an IRC, Slack, and Matrix user and netadmin, I will say that Slack and other nextgen chat services have a few advantages over IRC: - automatic backlog resumption - server stored pageable backlog - continuous presence (you don't disappear from the channel when you leave, you're just marked as away) - authentication built into the spec rather than implemented using a "services" layer - general upgrades to what is allowed in the chat, such as long pastes, inline images, and file uploads If you haven't tried Matrix yet (the best client is probably Riot at https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/ ), I encourage you to give it a try. It's essentially next generation IRC.
  - wizbright 9y ago
    That sounds like having an irc client connected to say ZNC. It has all of the same features and has been around for years..
    - Spoom 9y ago
      Sure, but a bouncer is another layer on top of your connection to the server, when architecturally it's much better to have the server manage that for you.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
        Why should end users care about the architecture? It's architecturally a hell of a lot better than a massive electron app that eats all of your RAM!
Raphmedia 9y ago
Discord is too branded as a gaming tool. No way I could convince any professionals to use it.
- Sonicrida 9y ago
  I've done this already. Definitely an easier pitch for startups.
- bathtub 9y ago
  What? This is where they started and you can also use the product for everything else than gaming. And if you mean the dark theme you can change this to a bright innocent I-am-serious-engineer Slack theme.
lm2s 9y ago
FWIW, I tried Discord recently and it felt more sluggish and heavier than Slack on macOS.
- bathtub 9y ago
  I made the opposite experiece and just made a test with some medium and similar sized chat servers with many users amd history (bitcoin related chat servers) on Slack and Discord in Chrome which should represent their native Electron apps: Data from Chrome Inspector's network tab: Slack Discord Req. 93 103 Transf.22.4MB 5.2MB Finish 39.19s 6.48s DomCL. 6.53s 4.01s Load 21.70s 4.16s Maybe some more of us could do some tests as well. Anyways, I really can't believe that Discord is sluggish. Slack definitely is. First I thought it is so slow because they load all the chat history but they don't.

empath75 9y ago

Do you use discord at work?

tosh 9y ago
Discord feels very responsive and lightweight. Anyone knows what their stack looks like?
- marcelfahle 9y ago
  Electron
- TkTech 9y ago
  They have some fantastic dev blogs[1]. Their backend seems to mostly be elixir. 1: https://blog.discordapp.com/tagged/engineering https://blog.discordapp.com/tagged/engineering
- thejosh 9y ago
  Elixir for the backend, they have around 5 million concurrent users.
- notamy 9y ago
  Elixir for the backend as others have said, and the frontend is React on Electron.
lmm 9y ago
I do for outside-asking-for-help. At my current client internal communications have to be self-hosted so neither Slack nor Discord is an option; if I were still at the startup where I worked previously (where teams chose their own tools) I'd certainly be pushing Discord.

notheguyouthink 9y ago

Do you find Discord to perform better than Slack? Any thoughts as to why? I've used Discord for gaming related purposes on another computer, but it didn't feel... "better" to me. Sluggish at times, but in understandably large rooms with lots of traffic. I'm mainly curious in your statement as to how Discord performs compared to Slack, and if better, how they achieve "better".

bathtub 9y ago
Onboarding is a millions times easier. With Slack you need for every chat a new login/password and 100 clicks for sign-up, skip tutorial and email-verification, WTH why? Getting users into Discord is one single click. With Discord you have one login and you can have different names per server. And Slacks admin pages are just a confusing pile of mess, my .vimrc is light-weight compared. Slack is so overrated and people just use it because everybody does. Discord has never been sluggish for me. However, both are timewasters.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  > Slack is so overrated and people just use it because everybody does. Sidenote, I use it because the integrations take a burden off of me. Ie, my CI might not have integrations for Discord. My CI has plugins, and do those have integrations for Discord too? Etcetc. Being the most popular is not always just due to "we use it because everyone does". Personally, I dislike how expensive Slack is. I'm not sure if I prefer Slack over Discord or not, but even if I preferred Discord, I'd still choose Slack for the integrations that I don't have to write myself.
  - bathtub 9y ago
    > My CI has plugins, and do those have integrations for Discord too? Yes and if not there is a Slack-compatible API, check Discord's API doc. Just try Discord, takes one minute and will know yourself if you like it. It's not a behemoth like Slack.
    - 9y ago

sandGorgon 9y ago

It is even more surprising that by just adding a few privacy features, they can start targeting the corporate market. I would gladly pay them.

developer2 9y ago
Privacy is a huge concern. It's difficult to phrase this properly without sounding like an asshole, but Discord's development team has a lot of very young people (no proof, but I'd swear some of them are 13-16 years old). If you've ever listened in on their Discord voice channels, the level of immaturity is astounding. Power to them - it's great to see talented youth create a great product. I just wouldn't trust them with a business's confidential information. Discord's specifics aside, it blows my mind that people use any off-site SAAS for internal communications, including Slack. The database set contains so much critical information, including infrastructure passwords, private SSL and SSH certs, etc. Employees will send anything and everything over the company's chat client. Even if you trust the company's employees and general security, the fact remains that your uploaded attachments typically have a public URL not requiring authentication to download.
- sandGorgon 9y ago
  The technology is there to solve this. End to end encryption solves this problem and lets the devs wash their hands off the privacy concerns.
  - mi100hael 9y ago
    End-to-end encryption is essentially useless/unsolved when it comes to large, dynamic groups like Slack channels. Any new member who joined wouldn't be able to see any history in any channel.
    - bathtub 9y ago
      But this is not a problem of Discord but of all group chats. The initial discussion point was that Discord might be insecure because of young hackers building the product.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

It's a wonder that any of these services enjoy success when IRC exists.

res0nat0r 9y ago
There are a million more embedded features in Slack than there are in IRC. Sure someone could spend a year trying to implement all of those plugins in their private IRC server and it be less functional and user friendly, but why would someone want to waste their time and money doing that?
Spoom 9y ago
As an IRC, Slack, and Matrix user and netadmin, I will say that Slack and other nextgen chat services have a few advantages over IRC: - automatic backlog resumption - server stored pageable backlog - continuous presence (you don't disappear from the channel when you leave, you're just marked as away) - authentication built into the spec rather than implemented using a "services" layer - general upgrades to what is allowed in the chat, such as long pastes, inline images, and file uploads If you haven't tried Matrix yet (the best client is probably Riot at https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/ ), I encourage you to give it a try. It's essentially next generation IRC.
- wizbright 9y ago
  That sounds like having an irc client connected to say ZNC. It has all of the same features and has been around for years..
  - Spoom 9y ago
    Sure, but a bouncer is another layer on top of your connection to the server, when architecturally it's much better to have the server manage that for you.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
      Why should end users care about the architecture? It's architecturally a hell of a lot better than a massive electron app that eats all of your RAM!

Raphmedia 9y ago

Discord is too branded as a gaming tool. No way I could convince any professionals to use it.

Sonicrida 9y ago
I've done this already. Definitely an easier pitch for startups.
bathtub 9y ago
What? This is where they started and you can also use the product for everything else than gaming. And if you mean the dark theme you can change this to a bright innocent I-am-serious-engineer Slack theme.

lm2s 9y ago

FWIW, I tried Discord recently and it felt more sluggish and heavier than Slack on macOS.

bathtub 9y ago
I made the opposite experiece and just made a test with some medium and similar sized chat servers with many users amd history (bitcoin related chat servers) on Slack and Discord in Chrome which should represent their native Electron apps: Data from Chrome Inspector's network tab: Slack Discord Req. 93 103 Transf.22.4MB 5.2MB Finish 39.19s 6.48s DomCL. 6.53s 4.01s Load 21.70s 4.16s Maybe some more of us could do some tests as well. Anyways, I really can't believe that Discord is sluggish. Slack definitely is. First I thought it is so slow because they load all the chat history but they don't.