
Show HN: GitHub Trending Repos - amrrs
https://github.com/vitalets/github-trending-repos
======
simonw
Using GitHub issues to power notifications in this way is absolutely inspired!

You get single-sign-in for anyone with a GitHub account.

You get both email AND push-based notifications without needing to run ANY of
the infrastructure yourself.

Your scrapers get to run in their own time and publish via a very well-
documented and easy to use API.

I'm totally sticking this idea in my back-pocket. It's brilliant.

~~~
AceJohnny2
I'm imagining the Github infrastructure folks cringing at this. The second-
order effects of people reusing the infrastructure for a different purpose
than initially intended.

Like how they caved and provided github.io because people were using Raw (or
some other feature of the repos) as a ad-hoc CDN anyhow.

In fact, I'm curious how much of their traffic is traditional git/repo view
and how much is any of these "second-order" services.

~~~
simonw
I bet they're fine with it. They have invested a great deal of engineering
effort in building a notification system that scales - there are plenty of
legitimate uses for that system that dwarf this clever hack in terms of
traffic (issues with hundreds or even thousands of subscribers).

If I were them I would be delighted at someone using my work in an unexpected
and creative way like this - having users surprise you like this (provided
it's not for abuse or spam) is one of the joys of software design.

You could figure out the actual impact by counting the number of individual
subscribers to all of the issues in this repo. My guess it's not even a
hundred yet.

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trextrex
Couldn't this be done a lot more simply with a mailing list or RSS feed? Using
GitHub issues seems a bit convoluted, although I'm guessing it's probably
because it's easier to set up and free to use. It seems like somebody should
build a service which makes use cases like this 0 config.

~~~
kylell
the never satisfied freeloaders

~~~
ryandrake
Pointing out existing technologies that might be more appropriate to use is
valid feedback. I don’t think that detracts from how neat the project is.

Some of the big questions I always ask myself before I set about writing code
for something are: Can this be done with older and more mature tech? Is this
already more or less solved by another project and what value am I adding?

~~~
always_good
But Github issues are free. And they have a tweeting bot, also free.

------
ryanianian
Seems kinda cool - works by updating a GH issue per language and you subscribe
to updates on the issue. But seems that the issues have been locked and not
updated since November without explanation as to why.

Hence cool idea but not actually what it says on the tin for the moment.

[edit]: isn't true the GH UI just wasn't rendering the most recent updates for
me. Viewing the issue pages themselves not so useful but subscribing to the
issue is really the intended usage anyhow.

~~~
r3bl
It might be that you've stumbled upon _some_ issue that didn't get updated?

I've checked a few weekly issues and they all seem to be regularly updated.
The comments seem to be locked to avoid anyone posting one in order to avoid
anyone spamming everyone who subscribed.

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pookeh
Github really should hire this guy and incorporate this as a feature.

------
JepZ
I think its a nice idea, especially regarding signal to noise. I mean, for
sure I could watch [https://github.com/trending](https://github.com/trending)
but in fact I don't care about a lot of languages which might be essential for
others (e.g. C#, C++).

Yes, RSS feeds and mailing lists would be nice too, but in the end I don't
care much how I receive the information as long as I can receive it
automatically somehow.

So far I have seen a lot of projects I know already, but I will try it for a
few weeks and see if there will be any new treasures :-)

------
bobbyi_settv
I picked one Python repo at random to start and got an empty repo that says
"Removed according to regulations":

[https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks](https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks)

According to google, it is something "widely used in mainland China to
circumvent Internet censorship". Does Github not allow this type of project,
or are they talking about a different form of "regulations"?

~~~
jyr0s
See master branch:
[https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks/tree/master](https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks/tree/master)

~~~
ateesdalejr
Wait... Did they hide the master branch from view on purpose?

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Kagerjay
I have my own way of tracking trending repos.

I use this url:

[https://github.com/trending/javascript?since=monthly](https://github.com/trending/javascript?since=monthly)

Then I use tabsnooze, [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
snooze/pdiebia...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
snooze/pdiebiamhaleloakpcgmpnenggpjbcbm?hl=en)

to go to that page once a month

works for me

------
vitalets
Thanks for posting this and for the comments!

Before creating this repo I've researched existing solutions and described the
comparison here: [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/five-ways-of-tracking-
trends...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/five-ways-of-tracking-trends-on-
github-63940fca63b)

------
mandliya
I use changelog nightly for similar purpose. It shows you hottest and most
starred repos within the day.

[http://nightly.changelog.com/2018/02/22/](http://nightly.changelog.com/2018/02/22/)

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tutfbhuf
Not long ago i made a small website for that:
[https://madnight.github.io/grendy/](https://madnight.github.io/grendy/) By
the way, it's written in purescript and haskell : )

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coldcode
Why am I only seeing changes for Swift from November?

~~~
vitalets
It seems you've looked at the issue open date. The updates to Swift are coming
daily: [https://github.com/vitalets/github-trending-
repos/issues/36#...](https://github.com/vitalets/github-trending-
repos/issues/36#issuecomment-368174053)

------
symbolepro
Why is this needed when I can go on gihub.com and check trending repos? I see
no point in this.

~~~
rynop
[https://github.com/trending](https://github.com/trending) does but if you
look at his repo he says "None of alternatives __can send notifications per
programming language __. That 's why I've created this project."

------
romanovcode
Doesn't GitHub provides exact this functionality by itself?

~~~
vitalets
Unfortunately not. GitHub official newsletter only contains trending
repositories across all programming languages. So you can't focus on
particular language.

