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0 pointsSpivak1y ago0 comments

It's a completely free, both in message volume and queue size, highly available hosted 1-1 and 1-n topic based message queue with automatic sharding, excellent performance, and high-quality prebuilt libraries. It has built-in notification support to all platforms and a basic UI toolkit that is easy to use.

The fact that it's also a chat thing is honestly secondary to the foundational tech.

0 comments

fschuett1y ago

I use Discord for notifications when someone starts a "Chat with customer support" chat on my site. I tried various "chat button" solutions, but I ended up writing the chat system myself because no solution was really tailored to my task (esp. custom file type uploads and Google Ads integration, so I know which ad started a chat). I need to react 24/7 to new customers, so I needed a tool to ping me with notifications on my phone. The chat messages are still saved in the company database, but I send a link with the Chat ID to Discord, so that someone can instantly login to the admin panel and reply to the customer.

Using Discord, all I had to do was to create a new, empty company server, copy the webhook URL and then POST to the URL and boom I get a ping notification with the Chat ID on my phone (or I can @ a colleague to distribute the customer support for different timezones).

It's not a very "orthodox" solution, but it certainly sucks less than the alternatives (plus it's free).

KronisLV1y ago

> It's a completely free, both in message volume and queue size, highly available hosted 1-1 and 1-n topic based message queue with automatic sharding, excellent performance, and high-quality prebuilt libraries. It has built-in notification support to all platforms and a basic UI toolkit that is easy to use.

"Thanks, I'll base my next enterprise project on Discord as the message queue of choice."

Hah, what an amusing way to look at things, thanks for that.

KronisLV1y ago

Clarification, due to the other person's (now flagged) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42163157

None of this is meant to ridicule anyone. If using Discord for home automation works, great, have fun at it, feels like a cool way to have a hacker mindset (not to discount the arguments that suggest that there are also other alternatives).

I still think that describing a popular chat platform as a highly available message queue is funny though, because that's a very unconventional way of looking at things.

RadiozRadioz1y ago

These characteristics are common in chat applications. XMPP realised this and has native Pub/Sub support in the protocol, in addition to messages https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html

paulddraper1y ago

Are you serious?

golergka1y ago

That's a serious part of Midjourney business strategy. Hard to imagine how much money did they save on the frontend.

throwaway712711y ago

or how much money they lost on missed business

1 more reply

dijksterhuis1y ago

not the parent, but yeah. they’ve basically described the system of discord there.

chat stuff is just one possible use case for the system.

like, when i read the root comment i was a bit like “huhhh?” but reading Spivak’s comment it now makes total sense.

also to add —

* discord gives you easy topic queue debugging. just login yourself and read the queue entries.

* something like 2000 character text content per message

* RBAC for topic queue access

* can probably turn it into a pub/sub topic queue system if you start adding webhooks and bots.

stavros1y ago

Let's try to send a few hundred messages per second over it, a task any queue should be able to perform easily, and see how well it performs!

1 more reply

paulddraper1y ago

This is just such a terrible idea. You really don't need to defend it.

You'll get rate limited in two seconds, for no upside.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

fschuett1y ago

It's not a very "orthodox" solution, but it certainly sucks less than the alternatives (plus it's free).

KronisLV1y ago

"Thanks, I'll base my next enterprise project on Discord as the message queue of choice."

Hah, what an amusing way to look at things, thanks for that.

KronisLV1y ago

Clarification, due to the other person's (now flagged) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42163157

I still think that describing a popular chat platform as a highly available message queue is funny though, because that's a very unconventional way of looking at things.

RadiozRadioz1y ago

These characteristics are common in chat applications. XMPP realised this and has native Pub/Sub support in the protocol, in addition to messages https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html

paulddraper1y ago

Are you serious?

golergka1y ago

That's a serious part of Midjourney business strategy. Hard to imagine how much money did they save on the frontend.

throwaway712711y ago

or how much money they lost on missed business

1 more reply

dijksterhuis1y ago

not the parent, but yeah. they’ve basically described the system of discord there.

chat stuff is just one possible use case for the system.

like, when i read the root comment i was a bit like “huhhh?” but reading Spivak’s comment it now makes total sense.

also to add —

* discord gives you easy topic queue debugging. just login yourself and read the queue entries.

* something like 2000 character text content per message

* RBAC for topic queue access

* can probably turn it into a pub/sub topic queue system if you start adding webhooks and bots.

stavros1y ago

Let's try to send a few hundred messages per second over it, a task any queue should be able to perform easily, and see how well it performs!

1 more reply

paulddraper1y ago

This is just such a terrible idea. You really don't need to defend it.

You'll get rate limited in two seconds, for no upside.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse