Discord Bot Programming Part I: Getting Started

Programming a Discord bot was my first real start to familiarizing myself with Node.js and what a ride it has been. This will be my stab at an overview of the process of making a Discord bot with the Discord.js library, both self bots and bot accounts. No prior knowledge of Node assumed. As with most new things, you need some sort of context or project before learning something new and maybe Discord bots could be that impetus as it was for me.

I see Discord as the successful spiritual successor to Raidcall: a VoIP software built for a scalable number of users (like TeamSpeak, but not Skype) but with on free server hosting, user identification, and friend's list. Although primarily marketed at gamers, Discord has achieved a wide enough audience, coupled with a sufficiently comprehensive permissions system and low barrier to entry, that it has also become usable for a general purpose. And so too has the demand for bots for various purposes grown.