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Mitchell Hashimoto (founder of Hashicorp [0]) did something similar to this, but to find open slots in courses he wanted in college according to his blog [1].

Mitchell Hashimoto (founder of Hashicorp [0]) did something similar to this, but to find open slots in courses he wanted in college according to his blog [1]. You're on the right track. From the linked page: "As I began college, I noticed that the poor technical design of the registration system made it incredibly difficult to get the set of classes I wanted. I developed automated registration software that would detect open slots in the full courses, and notify me via text message. While my friends were spending hours every day refreshing course schedules hoping to get into a full class, I was just waiting for a text message. And I always got into the classes, because a human refreshing a browser can't beat my software that was checking thousands of times per hour. Automation wins again." I thought I had read somewhere that he turned it into a product while he was in college, but that wasn't mentioned there. [0] https://www.hashicorp.com https://www.hashicorp.com [1] https://mitchellh.com/writing/automation-obsessed https://mitchellh.com/writing/automation-obsessed

maeil 2y ago
I reckon most HNers in such a situation have made the same script, I know I did.
- kurisufag 2y ago
  i did it literally yesterday! my sleep schedule's all out of wack, so i miss the slightly-late emails the public services send. now i get a nice loud fire alarm beep to wake me up when someone drops a course i want ;^)
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  I didn't have to, my college provided fairly functional class scheduling systems. It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed, and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money). I had this in a state school that isn't even our state's premier state school, and we are not a state known for computer science or anything, why do all these supposedly premier institutions not offer it?
  - maeil 2y ago
    To be fair, in my case it wasn't in the US. > It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed This just moves the scripting point to "signing up for the waiting list". I guess in that case it does mean that running it 24/7 wouldn't help. > and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money). You paid per course? In most of the world, you pay per semester and there are no per-course fees. So professors aren't particularly incentivized to take more students. In our case, the number of professors and size of rooms was simply insufficient for the number of students. Especially if you wanted a good professor - where I was at the variability in quality of teaching was pretty high. Or for some people, if they wanted to schedule things so that all their courses were packed into 4 days of the week, or they didn't want to wake up early, or whatever reason for making a particular course be in high demand. This led to the necessity of such scripts.
buildbot 2y ago
It’s a fun coincidence that it’s the same university/college, Michael Hashimoto went to UW (CSE).

maeil 2y ago

I reckon most HNers in such a situation have made the same script, I know I did.

kurisufag 2y ago
i did it literally yesterday! my sleep schedule's all out of wack, so i miss the slightly-late emails the public services send. now i get a nice loud fire alarm beep to wake me up when someone drops a course i want ;^)
mrguyorama 2y ago
I didn't have to, my college provided fairly functional class scheduling systems. It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed, and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money). I had this in a state school that isn't even our state's premier state school, and we are not a state known for computer science or anything, why do all these supposedly premier institutions not offer it?
- maeil 2y ago
  To be fair, in my case it wasn't in the US. > It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed This just moves the scripting point to "signing up for the waiting list". I guess in that case it does mean that running it 24/7 wouldn't help. > and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money). You paid per course? In most of the world, you pay per semester and there are no per-course fees. So professors aren't particularly incentivized to take more students. In our case, the number of professors and size of rooms was simply insufficient for the number of students. Especially if you wanted a good professor - where I was at the variability in quality of teaching was pretty high. Or for some people, if they wanted to schedule things so that all their courses were packed into 4 days of the week, or they didn't want to wake up early, or whatever reason for making a particular course be in high demand. This led to the necessity of such scripts.

buildbot 2y ago

It’s a fun coincidence that it’s the same university/college, Michael Hashimoto went to UW (CSE).