2 ms·

Sunsetting HN Notify

6 points by azhenley 4y ago

mdaniel 4y ago
> crashed the HN Crawler Err, why does one need a _crawler_ when they have a stream subscription API?
- jermaustin1 4y ago
  The crawler actually DID use the API. I'm using crawler as it crawled the API. It would get the MAX ID from the API, then request every ID between the last one it found and that one. One of the things that would cause a problem early on is that a request would bring back a "null" response for an ID that should exist, so it would pause and retry after 5 seconds, and do that 5 times. Sometimes it would still not have a response, so any reply to that response would then crash on a referential integrity check. So I had to remove the integrity so that that reply would still come in, even when I couldn't request the parent for whatever reason (caching?). It was little things like that that would happen randomly at 3am, and kill the client for hours until I woke up and saw there was an exception in the log, and no threads had downloaded in hours. Heaven forbid I was on vacation when it went down. No SSH key to remote in. I would have to hard reboot the droplet from the DO admin panel.
sacrosanct 4y ago
> immediately, there were more bugs needing more fixing Thing about releasing things publicly for the first time is: even if you've rigorously tested everything and ironed out bugs, users of the service will report bugs you never even thought of checking for. They will be running weird browser configs, do weird things with your service, and otherwise use it in ways you never dreamed of, surfacing obscure sharp edges in your code. This is why, upon public release you have to be ready to patch quickly.
- jermaustin1 4y ago
  As the author, what really confused me about this app... was there is only a single user facing form. You add your email address and your HN username. The bugs came from the dataset mostly.
azhenley 4y ago
Does anyone know of a good alternative? I have been using HN Notify heavily since it was released.
- jaggs 4y ago
  Same.
  - jaggs 4y ago
    Just found one - http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ [Edit - hmm...except I'm not sure it's working. Edit 2 - yep it works. :)]
- lawxls 4y ago
  If you're a telegram user, here's Hacker News Alerts Bot (I made it) [1] https://github.com/lawxls/HackerNews-Alerts-Bot https://github.com/lawxls/HackerNews-Alerts-Bot

6 points by azhenley 4y ago

mdaniel 4y ago

> crashed the HN Crawler Err, why does one need a _crawler_ when they have a stream subscription API?

jermaustin1 4y ago
The crawler actually DID use the API. I'm using crawler as it crawled the API. It would get the MAX ID from the API, then request every ID between the last one it found and that one. One of the things that would cause a problem early on is that a request would bring back a "null" response for an ID that should exist, so it would pause and retry after 5 seconds, and do that 5 times. Sometimes it would still not have a response, so any reply to that response would then crash on a referential integrity check. So I had to remove the integrity so that that reply would still come in, even when I couldn't request the parent for whatever reason (caching?). It was little things like that that would happen randomly at 3am, and kill the client for hours until I woke up and saw there was an exception in the log, and no threads had downloaded in hours. Heaven forbid I was on vacation when it went down. No SSH key to remote in. I would have to hard reboot the droplet from the DO admin panel.

sacrosanct 4y ago

> immediately, there were more bugs needing more fixing Thing about releasing things publicly for the first time is: even if you've rigorously tested everything and ironed out bugs, users of the service will report bugs you never even thought of checking for. They will be running weird browser configs, do weird things with your service, and otherwise use it in ways you never dreamed of, surfacing obscure sharp edges in your code. This is why, upon public release you have to be ready to patch quickly.

jermaustin1 4y ago
As the author, what really confused me about this app... was there is only a single user facing form. You add your email address and your HN username. The bugs came from the dataset mostly.

azhenley 4y ago

Does anyone know of a good alternative? I have been using HN Notify heavily since it was released.

jaggs 4y ago
Same.
- jaggs 4y ago
  Just found one - http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ [Edit - hmm...except I'm not sure it's working. Edit 2 - yep it works. :)]
lawxls 4y ago
If you're a telegram user, here's Hacker News Alerts Bot (I made it) [1] https://github.com/lawxls/HackerNews-Alerts-Bot https://github.com/lawxls/HackerNews-Alerts-Bot