The UI always loads instantly. On first load, things take as long to appear as Discord's network responses. On subsequent loads, everything comes from cache and is validated against REST in the background. It feels as fast as opening a plaintext file.
It's further along than I expected when I started. What's working right now: gateway with exponential backoff and reconnect, REST with per-route rate limiting, SQLite-backed cache with async reads/writes, full Discord permission resolution, and a composable block renderer that handles every Discord message type including embeds, attachments, reactions, stickers, and components. There's a full markdown parser, an async image cache with memory LRU and disk persistence, an unread and mute state system that survives restarts, and 370 passing unit and integration tests.
Voice is a post-launch problem. So are Nitro features.
Is there actually an audience for this outside of Linux power users? I know that's where the pain is most acute, but I'm genuinely curious whether Windows users would switch for the performance alone or whether the official client is good enough there that it doesn't matter.
Twitter, Reddit, etc. are all infamous rug-pullers that should have taught everyone this lesson permanently.
With their recent hostilities regarding age verification [1], there has been a lot of interest in alternatives.
The only problem is people are used to all the features discord provides, and alternatives [2] currently are nowhere near feature parity.
[1] https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...
[2] https://www.teamspeak.com/
There's already clients like dissent, dorion, abaddon and previously ripcord (RIP my fav)
Ripcord and discordo were my favorites amongst the alternatives.
kind is the missing Qt FOSS alternative.
Reddit allowed it for a while too until they smelt sweet IPO money.
All it takes is some revenue generating idea that the third party client doesn't support and it's curtains.
That seems like an assumption in this case
I have a lot of experience with Qt and QML, I've created a block editor[1] and an LLM chat client[2] and many other projects.
[1] https://rubymamistvalove.com/block-editor
[2] https://www.get-vox.com/
And I made a website for it shortly after I made this post:
https://kind.ihavea.quest
They seem to be most popular with the open source crowd. I think you could gain traction with the "normal" users by also including many of the gaming features that other native clients lack (game streaming, voice/video chat, soundboards, the lot). Also maybe consider actually supporting all of Discord's chat features, even the ones you don't personally use; things like forums, image boards, announcement channels, and all the other less-obvious Discord features are rarely implemented by third party clients and make for a pretty limited experience if you're in a server that uses them.
I don't think most people on Discord really care about the 2 second throbber on startup or the 500MiB of RAM that Discord wastes when all other applications on the system do the same. Discord isn't the fastest application and it's wasting resources, but it's not too slow. However, the same way Kunlun Tech Co., Ltd. has managed to sell Opera as a "gamer" browser with a non-insignificant market share, I think you could get traction by highlighting the performance aspects such a streamlined client permits.
FWIW Discord's TOS do not allow for third-party clients, and they have banned people using them (though usually only because the clients interacted with the APIs regarding friends, because those can be abused by spambots and scammers).
> So are Nitro features
I'd tread very carefully with supporting Nitro features in a custom client. If their API has endpoints for them I think you may be in the clear, but if there's even a remote chance that you'll be giving free users paid features, Discord will take notice quickly. Part of Discord's income is derived from spamming people with Discord Nitro promotions. If your alternative clients will get big enough without these, they'll probably notice.
As an Unreal game dev what I’ve wanted to remake in QT is the Epic Games Launcher.
I think Epic may be underway on this now but if you did a good enough job I feel like there may still be a window to pitch them on acquiring your work.
Too many posts on HN now are just nasty liars like this OP looking to bullshit others.
Now, I don't know about you but I already gave more than enough info when I signed up for an Internet account. Discord and similar chat apps like this are going to end up having to do this stuff because they're essentially businesses. On the other hand, I feel if you were to build a Discord-like layer on top of IRC it would be genuinely quite interesting. But maybe not original (people I think have done this already.) You could see if their solution were as usable as Discords. Make it so no /commands were needed and host a system to spin up rooms and discover them with the same mechanics as Discord.