HN Follow lets you follow authors on Hacker News, and get email notifications when they post. It was inspired by alerthn.com and hnreplies.com.<p>The app was built in an experimental style on Val Town. We’re trying to create a new web primitive that you can:<p>1. write like a function
2. run like a script
3. fork like a repo
4. install like an app<p>This is our 5th iteration of this same “HN Follow” app. We launched the 3rd version here on Hacker News six months ago[1], but it was very kindly removed from the front page by dang in favor of us launching Val Town itself first, which we did in January[2].<p>We’re trying to strike the right balance between something you can use and install with one click, and something you can infinitely customize. For example, you could fork `@rodrigoTello.hnFollowApp`[3] and change the input parameter from authors to a generic query, like I do here[4] to get notifications whenever “val town” is mentioned on HN. In addition to emailing myself (via `console.email`), I also send a message to our team’s Discord. The possibilities are endless, but it can also be overwhelming. We’re trying to find the balance where we help you navigate the space of possible integrations, without limiting you the way a no-code tool would. We would really appreciate your guys’ feedback and suggestions!<p>[1] - HN Follow, first launch: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33533830" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33533830</a><p>[2] - Val Town launch: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34343122" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34343122</a><p>[3] - `@rodrigotello.hnFollowApp`: <a href="https://www.val.town/v/rodrigotello.hnFollowApp" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/v/rodrigotello.hnFollowApp</a><p>[4] - My fork of hnFollow: <a href="https://www.val.town/v/stevekrouse.hnValTown" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/v/stevekrouse.hnValTown</a>
What's the value of bringing Facebook/Instagram mechanics into HN? Wouldn't that skew social dynamics away from egalitarianism, giving rise to "influencers", social bubbles and rise in clickbait? I think that <i>not</i> having a 'follow your friends' mechanism is <i>a feature</i> of HN.
How about an app that shows a list of friends like below<p>pg(3)<p>cj(4)<p>stevekrouse(2)<p>Each of above name is hyperlinked and leads to a page where I can see all their updates. The count in bracket let's me know how many updates they have. This is not necessarily a suggestion for this app. I wish more social media apps adopted this approach instead of current time hogging feeds.
Just some random feedback on the val.town interface. The concept is interesting but I have one gripe.<p>I want to know what the code I'm about to run will do and I notice the pretty unique `@stevekrouse.hnLatestPosts` type interface where it looks like you can reference functions. But this leads to a deep chain of reference. Like, that function leads to `@stevekrouse.hnSearch` which leads to `@stevekrouse.fetchJSON` which leads to `@stevekrouse.normalizeURL`, etc.<p>There is some kind of DAG of dependencies that is invisible to me. I'm wondering what could be done from a UI perspective here? Like, maybe a tree view where each node is expandable? Right now it just pops open a new browser tab and I end up with context spread across multiple tabs.<p>The concept of composable references is powerful but I think the UX could be improved.
I am sure there are bots/people that follow their enemies and downvote lol. Everytime I post something unpopular, I get my non-controversial posts downvoted predictably for some time. Or maybe that's just shadow moderation.
The val.town idea is very promising but I think it's not as social as it could be.<p>The val.town page is dedicated to developers and convinces with features. What I am missing is content. The explore page [1] has popular functions, which are the content of val.town, but they are not content in a social sense.<p>HN and reddit engage users before they make an account. It's very good that I can run code without making an account. But I have to interact and think before I am hooked. Could users be hooked on content? I could imagine a landing page on a second domain that would show the result of scripts that users vote to the top. (Of course the knowledge would lie in preventing dick pics.)<p>Adding votes should also be possible for the explore page itself. HN/newest is not as convincing as the ranked HN frontpage. A short Readme section and a result section would make the code more approachable.<p>The UX seems to be choosing precision over smoothness. Trying the HN Top Story in /explore, it's surprising that the result is just the title, without a link. To change that, I would prefer if a simple click on the function would directly allow me to edit the function. The ctrl-click with the new tab works, but it doesn't feel right.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.val.town/explore" rel="nofollow">https://www.val.town/explore</a>
I like the idea of val.town, each snippet is isolated and can reference to other snippets & packages.<p>One thing I wish was that other runtimes would be shipped aswell, like Ruby. But I understand that maintaing such runtime is a burden.<p>I know that Vercel supports Ruby as serverless runtime though, so I know it’s possible.<p>Other than that, I think val.town will boom in popularity soon. It’s a unique idea.
“When they post”<p>Does this include comments, or just posting submissions?<p>IMO the former would be overkill for email notifications, and the latter would be not terribly useful.
Now, the really scary option would be to automatically correlate HN accounts with other accounts and pieces of text based on the previous work done in this area to find alternative HN accounts (that was already awkward enough).
Off topic, but I would love the opposite of this. The ability to block certain HN users, just hide their comments entirely. Certain people have shown again and again they are not willing to have good faith arguments, and I simply don't care to be subjected to their nonsense.