diff --git a/src/Blog/wwwroot/posts/how-building-a-discord-bot-made-me-a-better-developer/index.md b/src/Blog/wwwroot/posts/how-building-a-discord-bot-made-me-a-better-developer/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1d7b156 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/Blog/wwwroot/posts/how-building-a-discord-bot-made-me-a-better-developer/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +```json meta +{ + "title": "How Building A Discord Bot Made Me A Better Developer", + "lead": "Some practical lessons I picked up while wrestling with WebSockets, concurrency, and Discord's Gateway API", + "isPublished": true, + "publishedAt": "2025-06-17", + "openGraphImage": "posts/how-building-a-discord-bot-made-me-a-better-developer/og-image.png", +} +``` + +I wanted to build a Discord bot for my server. How hard could it be, right? Connect to Discord's API, listen for messages, respond when needed. Should be a weekend project. + +Spoiler alert: it wasn't. + +What I thought would be straightforward turned into a crash course in building resilient network clients. By the time I had a working `DiscordGatewayClient` that could stay connected reliably, I'd learned a bunch of things that made me a better developer. + +Here's what building this bot taught me—maybe some of it will be useful for your projects too. + +## Abstractions Are Worth The Extra Work (Even When They Feel Unnecessary)