Edit: old post is someone is curious: https://dev.to/jamilxt/electron-vs-gpui-what-discords-290-mb-rust-rewrite-can-and-cannot-prove-34b6
Replaced with the one from The Verge
On the one hand, I would love if more applications moved to native rendering instead of Electron… On the other hand, this is no doubt all vibe coded which I hate. On the third hand I somehow have, what’s gonna happen to alternative clients like Vesktop? I hope they’ll keep working because everything Discord offers by default is so bad.
this is no doubt all vibe coded which I hate
No doubt, but why do you hate it? Vibe coding actually works now, and it means we can ditch Electron!
Vibe coding actually works now
Guess you missed this:

Do you think Valve isn’t using AI? lol
Hi friend! Epic Games actively promoting that they are “vibe coding” all their software and being all cocky is not good.
The effective monopoly by Valve is not great, and DRM games are not good at all, but prices aren’t being driven up like the console market is, they are awesomely supporting Linux with projects like Proton, they are innovating with hardware (albeit unfulfilled orders are big problem that they need to fix!), meanwhile Epic is boasting about a broken vibe coded Linux client and they are not offering anything much of value to the open-source community, nothing like Proton at the very least!
I would encourage everybody to purchase games through GOG and itch.io if it’s available there, with Steam as a last resort e.g. for some multiplayer titles! Lutris, Heroic, etc. exist if you use Linux :D
The CEO of Epic Games has also donated lots of money to Omarchy, and tells you all you need to know about their beliefs (if yapping about LLMs replacing human programming wasn’t enough).
I understand the negative sentiments, but LLMs are replacing human coding as we speak & largely have already outside of certain niche sectors. This is where we are, Valve engineers are certainly using LLMs as well. Sweeny is far worse than Gabe in everything, intelligence, political views etc, but that matters very little here. Everyone is vibecoding to a certain extent & I’m not sure what’s better, actively promoting it or trying to pretend that you are not. The industry is gravitating toward the latter, because that’s what seems to sell more for obvious reasons, but it’s just theater.
My personal opinion is that LLMs shouldn’t be used at all except for certain use cases, namely translation and processing large data sets (computers are good at repeating tasks, LLMs are no different). However, of course, some people will be using LLMs for programming. I do not and am against it, but people do what people do, however there is a difference between using it a tool and claiming that it will replace human programming. Neither is particularly amazing in my book, but almost everybody would agree that the latter is much, much worse, for jobs, the maintainability of the codebase, and user experience (broken apps are bad!)
Epic Games are claiming to “vibe code” all their software and repeating the rhetoric of the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Turns out, everybody does not like it when companies ship broken software that doesn’t work at all, and boasting about it will hurt your image.
that matters very little here
I would imagine most people would prefer supporting someone who doesn’t donate to racists! LLMs, especially corporate ones, are typically associated with the far-right because it’s literally giving a handful of companies supreme power over your information, your code, your independent thinking, and most importantly in this case your creativity (a fascist’s wet dream).
Also, you seem to have ignored my main points about Valve. Their monopoly is bad, we should support other third-party stores like itch.io and GOG more! You have also ignored Valve’s contribution to Linux gaming and their genuine innovation in hardware (see Steam Deck, Frame VR headset, Steam Controller 2, etc.)
there is a difference between using it a tool and claiming that it will replace human programming
Yeah the difference is about 6 months of model releases.
Seriously, you would have been totally correct 6 months ago (or if you are still using models from 6 months ago). Now… not so much.
Remember when we all laughed when Anthropic tried to vibe code a C compiler and it was laughably broken? Yeah now they can vibe code an entire OS.
(They should really run that C compiler test again just to show how much progress they’ve made.)
I anticipate that this is an effort to clamp users into their ecosystem
Every Discord user is already in their “ecosystem”. Even if you use a third party client, every single message you send is available to them to scan/sell to advertisers or cops with zero barriers whatsoever.
The only benefit of a third party client (besides UX enhancements and customization) is that Discord can’t execute malware/spyware natively on your PC. This is something they will inevitably do in the future in an effort to chase endless growth, but afaik it’s not happening today. They make enough money from the data they harvest from your chats, at least for now.
Which is what I meant.
There are lots of Vencord plugins that allow you to get Nitro functionality (or close enough anyway) for free. I don’t expect them to be particularly fond of that.
They are almost for sure all going to die.
Not if Discord intends its web client to still work.
LLM writing, just infuriating to read.
Another example of how a human could have delivered the same information in 25% the time.
Sorry, I missed it.
I spend 10 minutes trying to find an article about that news, the only other option being the post by the Discord CTO on Twitter of all places.
I’ll see if there’s a genuine blog post about it now.
Edit: updated to Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM
Positive: Rust means no more Electron.
Negative: Rust typically means massive attack surface through hundreds or thousands of third-party dependencies.
Negative: Discord likes to demand personal information.
Negative: Discord remains the gatekeeper of your creative work.
Negative: Discord can harvest everything in your direct messages and private channels.
Negative: Discord has been known to lock people out of their communities if they don’t give up their personal information, or even at random.Most of that has nothing to do with a rewrite, and I don’t think the attack surface of an Electron app is actually any better because it’ll depend on bloody
left-pador whatever.
One of the main benefits to using Discord in a browser is that you can nuke all those dumb popups with uBO. And I have my browser open anyway. Not sure why I’d want the Rust native app. Definitely not sure why I’d want the electron app.







