
Ask HN: why not an API? - giles_bowkett
We get all these ideas about why not do X, why not do Y, etc. Let's just let these people implement their ideas.<p>In the Rails world web apps are set up to have APIs by default. That way if somebody thinks a site should be better in a particular way, they don't have to ask anybody's permission or convince other people. They just build it, and if they were right, then people use it, and if they were wrong, they know for sure, instead of nursing a grudge for years about their great underappreciated feature idea or blah blah blah.<p>It's much more interesting to have a lot of people building different clients for your system than it is to speculate about what might or might not be a good change. Speculation overlooks the fact that these changes are implementation-specific, and the fact that you won't know how you like it until you try it. When a bunch of different people build a bunch of different clients, you find out for a fact what is or isn't a good idea by looking at what clients succeed and what clients fail, as well as what features everybody copies vs. what ideas die on the vine.<p>A good example is Twitter. I tried most of the popular clients, hated them, stuck with the Web interface, and then Tweetie came along for iPhone. now I prefer to read Twitter on my iPhone even if I'm sitting at my computer, because it's just better (in most cases) than the Web interface. Something like 80% of Twitter's traffic is API traffic, not Web traffic, because practically everyone has a favorite client that isn't the Web site.<p>I know people find my blog posts about what's wrong with Hacker News interesting. But the thing is, I am not one of those people. I am so bored with talking about what's wrong with Hacker News. And as boring as my own posts about the subject are, all you other people who post Ask HN links about the subject, your posts are even more boring. Wouldn't you find an alternate HN interface implementing my ideas more interesting than reading me rant? Wouldn't you rather build alternate HN interfaces than whine to pg as if he were your daddy?<p>Lacking an API, I've resorted to hackery. Eric from Internet Duct Tape wrote me a Greasemonkey script which auto-filters Hacker News for links to domains I don't want to see and hides those links. Ironically my own blog is on that list; I don't want to get into comment wars here or anywhere.<p>I still hear about it from friends and co-workers when my blog "charts" here, but I can tell you all that a HN which makes comment wars impossible or at least harder to get into is much, much better than a Hacker News which makes them easy. I also have a 100% Arrington-free Hacker News through the same script, and let me tell you, my Hacker News is ABSOLUTELY more fun to read than yours. More fun for me to read, anyway, which is really the main point. What one person needs out of a user interface will be different from what another person needs. User interface should vary by user. You can customize Photoshop and you can customize emacs. You should be able to customize any Web app as well.
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compay
I love the simplicity of HN but yeah, I would love to be able to tweak.
There's definitely something strange about the concept of a website for
hackers these days being... well... not hackable.

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thomaspaine
I think this was suggested somewhere else, but why not just have a HN script
repository where people could upload and rate HN Greasemonkey scripts? It
seems simpler than creating your own HN client via an API.

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Raphael
Use the RSS feeds. Hack away.

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compay
The links RSS feed doesn't have much information beyond the links. No
submitter, no points. This makes them a lot less useful for hacking.

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pclark
whats the question?

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giles_bowkett
can we get an API?

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giles_bowkett
or, to put it another way, why not an API?

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giles_bowkett
ok, you know how all my posts about Hacker News being doomed rocket to the top
spot on the site?

and this question isn't even on the front page?

THAT is why Hacker News is doomed.

if the people reading Hacker News WERE ACTUALLY HACKERS they would have
already demanded an API, and this would be the number one topic of discussion.
real hackers are more interested in getting an API than discussing why or why
not their site is or is not doomed.

my blog posts on blah blah blah Hacker News is doomed SHOULD NOT be less
interesting to hackers than a question about getting an API.

doomed, doomed, doomed.

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cchooper
Actaully, pg has been asked this before and his answer was 'Yes.'

So we're only doomed x 2.

