
How we got 1,500 GitHub stars by mixing time-tested technology with a fresh UI - romanhotsiy
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-we-got-1-500-github-stars-by-mixing-time-tested-technology-with-a-fresh-ui-b310551cba22
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Cynddl
Despite the title, the article raises an interesting point: why do we prefer
new code, with less features, to old but robust projects.

> _Unfortunately, we were affected by cognitive bias: old code is bad code.
> But the truth can be the opposite. The old code is battle-tested by
> thousands of users in hundreds of different projects. Most of the critical
> bugs have been fixed, the documentation is complete, there are tons of
> questions and answers on StackOverflow and Quora._

I'm quite guilty here; I've realized that I always check the date of the last
commit on Github before testing a project. I feel like I do this more for
small projects where documentation and use cases might be missing, and for
which I'm expecting help from the community.

~~~
insulanian
Old last commit date could mean two things:

1\. Project left in unfinished state and development stalled, in which case
it's reasonable to run away from it.

2\. Project done (fulfilling it's purpose) and turned to maintenance mode, in
which case I'd be quite happy (as a matter of fact I'd prefer) to use it as I
know I'm dealing with a stable codebase and don't need to be afraid of
breaking changes in the future.

I think it would help if maintainers would state the "completeness" in the
README file.

~~~
matt_s
This used to be indicated by version numbers:

\- 0.x = version in some beta/alpha/unstable state

\- 1.x = version in somewhat stable/complete state

------
crisopolis
Also their user onboarding literally forces a unknowing user to create a
GitHub account then star their specific repository.

Making GitHub stars ultimately meaningless, if they ever meaned anything.

~~~
petee
I always assumed stars were just a form of bookmarking for me to find projects
again easily, since there is no other method than 'watching', which results in
too much info

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nsmith7979
Hey, I'm the author of the "GraphQL Visualizer" tool
([http://nathanrandal.com/graphql-
visualizer/](http://nathanrandal.com/graphql-visualizer/)) that they mention
in the article as inspiration for their project.

This new project is quite nice and definitely a step up from mine.

Also wanted to mention that there is a CLI version of the visualizer at
[https://github.com/sheerun/graphqlviz](https://github.com/sheerun/graphqlviz)
for when you want to quickly visualize a GraphQL endpoint for documentation
purposes, etc. Keep up the good work!

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nerdponx
_But after looking at the source code we found a fatal flaw in this tool: it
used Graphviz — a decades old tool written in plain C and compiled to
unreadable JavaScript using Emscripten._

Are the "decades old" and "plain C" aspects supposed to be bad things? It
seems like the real problem is "compiled to unreadable JavaScript". Graphviz
is a great example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

~~~
ryandrake
"Decades old" often means that it is mature, has relatively few bugs, and is
not going to soon go through some major API-breaking re-architecture just
because the maintainer wants to experiment with a new framework-of-the-week.
"Written in plain C" means I will likely be able to call/integrate it into my
project with little fuss. These are both things to actively look for when
browsing for open source libraries.

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diggan
Ignoring the fact that Github Stars are a aweful metric for anything else than
vanity, "More bells and whistles" feels like a terrible advice and you should
much more focus on a "easy-to-get-started" readme with just the minimal amount
of beels and whistles to effectively communicate what your thing is really
about.

~~~
nraynaud
I'm extatic one of my project reached 100 stars. Sometimes we need to feel
good.

~~~
trakout
Agreed. I also think there's a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you got
those stars in a completely organic manner.

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lgas
How much do github stars sell for these days?

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Apparently, around $325 for 1500 stars: hxxp://githubstars.com/

~~~
c8g
[http://githubstars.com](http://githubstars.com) this a really helpful site.
curl project got 5k stars from it :p

~~~
yorwba
I believe your parent comment censored censored the link to avoid boosting the
site's page rank. You may want to edit your comment (or not).

~~~
spraak
Can you explain what that means/what happens?

~~~
nerdponx
Search engines rank sites (in part) according to the number of other sites
that link to them. Wikipedia is ranked very highly in Google largely because
many, many sites link to Wikipedia.

The PageRank algorithm to compute these kinds of rankings was one of Google's
early innovations, and was the secret to its initial dominance over the
early-2000s search engine market.

~~~
colinbartlett
But the links all have rel="nofollow"

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amelius
Or how about simply not succumbing to the latest UI trends, which will be
different next year anyway?

