Github Explorer: Finding random interesting software projects
July 21, 2012 7:49 AM Subscribe
Github Explorer: Finding random interesting software projects
Basically one part a way of finding interesting open source software projects on github, one part an experiment in discovery mechanisms. Like Wikipedia's Random Article feature, only less prone to giving you uninteresting things.
The about page has more info about what it is and how it works.
Basically one part a way of finding interesting open source software projects on github, one part an experiment in discovery mechanisms. Like Wikipedia's Random Article feature, only less prone to giving you uninteresting things.
The about page has more info about what it is and how it works.
Role: Sole author
xqwzts: Thanks. Glad you like it.
I know about the blank repo thing. It's kinda annoying. The problem is that github isn't returning anything sensibly blank - there's a fair bit of markup in the response. So I need to do something relatively cheap to detect when the markup doesn't contain any text and treat that as blank.
It's not hard to fix, it's just that the annoyance of fixing : annoyance of bug ratio is quite high so it's relatively low down on my priority list. :-)
posted by DRMacIver at 12:01 AM on July 25, 2012
I know about the blank repo thing. It's kinda annoying. The problem is that github isn't returning anything sensibly blank - there's a fair bit of markup in the response. So I need to do something relatively cheap to detect when the markup doesn't contain any text and treat that as blank.
It's not hard to fix, it's just that the annoyance of fixing : annoyance of bug ratio is quite high so it's relatively low down on my priority list. :-)
posted by DRMacIver at 12:01 AM on July 25, 2012
That's cool. This may just be me but I wasn't sure if I should hit refresh or look for some ajaxy button that does it for me. :-)
posted by circular at 11:31 AM on July 25, 2012
posted by circular at 11:31 AM on July 25, 2012
circular: Hm. Interesting point. Maybe that needs to be more obvious. Thanks.
posted by DRMacIver at 2:19 AM on July 29, 2012
posted by DRMacIver at 2:19 AM on July 29, 2012
Pretty nifty tool, although I would prefer not to be shown any projects without README files. Filtering by programming language or other criteria would be helpful in amping up the signal to noise ratio, but cmd+R is easy enough.
posted by jlh at 3:19 AM on July 31, 2012
posted by jlh at 3:19 AM on July 31, 2012
jih: You actually can filter by programming languages (the language links on the right hand side). The UI for it should be made more useful though, yes. For other criteria, there's the search box at the top.
I... actually can't remember why I decided not to filter out projects without READMEs. Doing so is a good idea, so I'll change that. Thanks.
posted by DRMacIver at 12:06 AM on August 2, 2012
I... actually can't remember why I decided not to filter out projects without READMEs. Doing so is a good idea, so I'll change that. Thanks.
posted by DRMacIver at 12:06 AM on August 2, 2012
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Great app, thanks for it.
Also just to point out, if no README is provided your "Alas! The author of this repository has neglected to add a README." message shows up, but if a README file exists but is empty all that's there is a blank region [example]
posted by xqwzts at 1:02 PM on July 24, 2012