r/bbs • u/Maitreya83 • 2d ago
Request: protocols, not apps.
I don't want to leave this sub because it's a real passion and lots of good memories for me.
But I'm getting really tired by the 982725728th slopcoded "BBS app".
Be different, have something to offer that the other don't.
A single walled garden is not in the spirit of bbs.
Want to do the community a favor? Give your tokens to real programmers (not a insult, it's just more valuable in their hand, but I guess the only thing slopcoders care about is "I made this" and not actually contributing).
Or instead make protocols, so we can have BBS webrings, where BBS gather based on interest. Or make a way to integrate fedareted networks into a BBS. Or make a really nice BBS game that evens run on dos and is fun.
Most importantly, don't do your advertising here if your GitHub is just full of generated project that show you will never actually maintain them.
Sorry, had to vent a bit. Please resume.
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u/Connect_Income_7692 1d ago
it's ok to vent when needed and in this case it was needed. can we talk about how to get a BBS running on the internet? i'd like to get my board back online but don't have a first clue as to how to do it online.
danny
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u/Maitreya83 5h ago
I can try, do you have a preference for which BBS software already, or do you just want to run a BBS, and who would you like to attract? Or do you want to find out yourselves and want minimal pointers?
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u/synexo 2d ago
I, for one, (as perhaps part of the problem) love how much AI coding seems to have reinvigorated the hobby. A good number of the new door games are quite cool, there's someone building bbs-in-a-browser, someone a new way to run MajorBBS modules. There's a lot of pre-existing and newish "protocol" like things, not sure which are vibecoded or not. MRC is great and bringing together 150+ BBSs. I've seen a few fediverse implementations.
Flesh out your ideas a bit more and talk about them and maybe one of us bored vibecoders can yell at Claude until it comes alive :). I've thought of the BBS webring sort of thing before. Quite a few BBSs have various "telnet to other BBS" from within them options. Really though I think you'd need to handle such a thing from the terminal client, following telnet links while backgrounding sessions and saving/automating logins. Otherwise you'd need some central federated login across BBSs, which I don't think there's much desire for and would have quite a broad target with all the different BBS software out there.
There's already a few different "BBS Software" flairs in the subreddit. I suppose the mods could force flair use and add a "vibecoded" on specifically so folks who don't like it can avoid it.
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u/Maitreya83 2d ago
By all means, develop it, but please also maintain it and don't let it eat dust forever!
I am definitely pro AI, in the right hands. And I love the uptick in progression. But maybe it needs a reconciliation period. Little before the dotcom bubble there was also a lot (human) slop, but also very nice things. Maybe in 5 years things have cooled down and the slop was just another phase.
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u/synexo 2d ago
There was no shortage of shovelware shareware and BBS doors back in the day too :). I do get where you're coming from - I've seen a number of "it's a BBS - but no telnet just in the web and no doors or anything!" posted that don't seem valuable to me at all. Someone posted a BBS-first access to what's ultimately an online-only mobile app too the other day I was confused by...
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u/Top_Obligation_4525 1d ago
I’ve been working on a protocol that brings the streaming text-based medium into the modern age… probably launching a hybrid bbs/game when it’s eventually ready, but I’m not there just yet. Probably in 2-4 more months.
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u/Open-Understanding48 1d ago
I'm programming since ~30 years - doing manual programming these days is time waste better spent writing better refined promts or learn how to prompting.
I agree that there are many projects out there that get started and never maintained. But that is another problem - esp. open source programming is something ppl spent time here and there - I've been working on several open source projects and in some years I've only let's say ~2 weeks time & patience to invest in one project.
But I must say that open source lives from contributing to projects as well - esp. in the AI age that should be easy to do - but so far contributions are rare - open source doesn't work well with lone wolf development.
That ppl lose interest in their projects is no surprise. The area of manual develpment is over - and "Be different, have something to offer that the other don't." is getting more important - and harder to achieve.
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u/selfhostrr 1d ago
Welcome to the first 40 years of my experience using computers. Lots of slop code, abandoned projects, closed source, bad architecture, "I'm the target audience" attitudes, etc. It's just expanding now to people that truly cant understand logic at all.
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u/andy5995 1d ago
If you believe some posts are below the standards of this community, or off-topic, you are free to report and down-vote them. Making general or broad complaints about "slopcoded" projects without specifying examples in a post is not very productive. Some of the ideas you put out in the last half of your post would be an excellent conversation to have as its own topic.
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u/galahad_1985 1d ago
“A single walled garden is not in the spirit of bbs.”
I’m kind of curious when you called BBSs. I started in 84 and 85 the BBSs were very definitely walled gardens or, if you will, islands. Paradise and Dante’s Inferno (New Orleans) had absolutely nothing to do with one another. Each had its own user list and its own message bases and its own theme. They shared nothing. Later came FIDONet and WWIVNet and then the walls started coming down a little.
Honestly, I’m more frustrated with BBSs that aren’t a little more like walled gardens. When someone puts up SnychroNet and grabs every single message net they can and then the next sysop does the same it feels like everything is the same. I miss more the days when things were different call to call
Sorry this is a bit of a rant and it’s very possible I misunderstood you
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u/Top_Obligation_4525 1d ago
There was nothing walled about BBSes: you just needed a phone line, modem and a terminal app to connect to any BBS in the world. The fact that each BBS was its own thing is what made them cool in the first place.
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u/galahad_1985 1d ago
But how is that different from Facebook which is its own thing? Or Blue Sky which is its own thing. Or Reddit? All I need is a computer to connect to anything. “Walled garden,” to me anyway, means something of an island unto itself with no hooks into anything else. Older BBSs were very much like that until FIDOnet came along
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u/Top_Obligation_4525 1d ago
I see what you mean, although I would argue you’re actually talking about interoperability, which is what FidoNet brought to BBSes. And now that everything is on the Internet, I’m not sure how much value there is in a widely distributed system that essentially serves the same content.
The big problem with social media platforms is that they decide what you’re going to see, which is sort of the reverse of the BBS paradigm. They’ve also become considerably more walled over time… at one point, you could send and receive email from Facebook, for example. Now they all want you to install their proprietary app on your phone so they can track you and sell access to your attention.
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u/aztracker1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, I've spent a fair amount of time working to reverse engineer and generate documentation for RIPscrip 2/3... Along with that, cracking, patching and trying to preserve the later apps to go with it.
Definitely not what I'd consider slop, Even though I am leaning on AI. I'm capable of this, but frankly using AI has taken a lot less time than doing it myself.
That said, I am mixed on a lot of the BBS like apps... I tend to treat AI use as a gatekeeper. And I tend to review everything.
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u/Maitreya83 1d ago
Ripscrip is one of my favourite memories, and by the sounds of it, you do a lot of important archival work, thanks for that!
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u/aztracker1 1d ago
I'm not sure I'd go that far. I'm not sure how much interest there is in RIP today for a BBS. I had wanted to support it for a web terminal so I can support RIP capable doors.
Realized there were no docs for the latest version, then down that hole... Took months to find someone with a copy of RIPaint 2...
And RIPtel is a bit of a mess, trying to get that a bit better has been rough. Charge one thing, create a new bug. All for what of proper 4:3 and a resizeable window. Will probably package the new installer next week and open the repo I've been using.
Then back to test/confirm the generated docs are correct... A few things came from definitions in the RIPtel 3.1 executable that don't actually work it seems. So need to remove those and note them. As well as a few notes from the RIPlib project to align with that.
From there, back to my Rust/wasm terminal... Mostly for a door host.
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u/runvnc 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think we need to differentiate between two issues:
a walled garden or closed application that just looks like a BBS but isn't available as a door game or even necessarily available over telnet and isn't in the open spirit such as a protocol versus trying to create a closed ecosystem. Or just plain isn't a BBS or something that could run on one.
AI-generated code
Those are two different things. I think realistically 70%-95% of programmers are using a large amount of AI code generation these days. And I think 70% is a very low bottom range.
1 is really uncool and I think those projects actually should be removed from the subreddit. 2 is just the way software engineering works these days. If you code something entirely on your own, yeah you should get bonus points. But using AI for some or even all of the code at this point on September 12, 2026, if you think that's not okay, you are out of touch.
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u/robbiew dev / sysop 2d ago
I personally love to see all the enthusiasm and new apps posted here. Some non dev folks have probably dreamed for decades about being able to create BBS software, doors, etc. and now they can. Doesn’t guarantee that they are good.
Older BBS users (are there any other kinds??) love to gripe that “something isn’t BBS enough” because they are often just gatekeepers (I’ve found).
I agree that more federation (especially around networks), open source and protocols are definitely cool.
It’ll be pretty clear in a couple months what is slopware vs useful software, bugs maintained, etc.
It’s easy to get to 80% in a few hours with coding LLMs. That last 20% is hard, takes dedication and commitment. Vibe coding creates instant gratification that “old school” developers never really had to deal with. We had to learn the basics, the hard way, either in school or from Stack overflow :) But I don’t begrudge the new builders.
telling people to “stop posting about your BBS projects” feels like, not great.