Show HN: Newcomer Ranking – Alternative to GitHub Trending for New Repos

[zxcholmes]

I've been working on git-stars.org and created a "Newcomer Ranking" that I think does a better job of discovering new popular projects than GitHub Trending.

While GitHub Trending often shows the same established repositories cycling through, my Newcomer Ranking specifically focuses on repositories that are both new AND gaining significant traction recently.

[nasso_dev]

Judging by the comments: was this project built by an LLM, posted here by an LLM, the replies to comments written by an LLM?

Is there even a human at any step or is this an agent running in the background with "go to HN front page" as its ultimate goal?

[GreenWatermelon]

And it seems there are a bunch of broken stuff that anyone with a lick of CSS skills would notice and fix right away. For example, the first 4 elements of each card (number, title, external link icon, and tag) seem like they should've been in on the same line. The pill-like "Hot" doesn't normally take a whole line by itself...

This os trivially fixed by wrapping them in a flex container. In tailwind that would take 2 seconds.

So we have:

- OP didn't even look at this project before posting it, or...

- they looked and didn't find anything wrong (no eye for quality), or....

- they looked, saw it looked off, but didn't bother to fix it, either due to lack of necessary skill to do that or maybe they didn't want to invoke the agent a second time???

I concur with your conclusion that it seems no human was involved in any step.

Also, evidently, thing doesn't even work given it shows years-old repos that didn't actually get any traction recently. It's AI slop in product form

[Arch-TK]

Even if an LLM came up with the idea for using an LLM to come up with project ideas, then implementing those project ideas, then posting those projects on HN and representing the project on HN. Someone set up the first LLM. So there's always a human...

[manyaoman]

First I thought you're surely kidding, but after looking into it I realized you could be right. RIP HN.

[VoidWhisperer]

This is decidedly not a 'new' repo but shows up there anyways: https://github.com/mdn/mdn/

Also, design sidenote: the purple font that the navigation bar takes when an option is highlighted makes it next to impossible to read against the dark gray background

[poly2it]

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45541068 (8 days ago)

[FredrikMeyer]

One of the projects listed for me was a Clojure project that hasn't been updated for 3 years.

https://github.com/stuartsierra/component

[CaptainOfCoit]

I think that's because Component is done/finished. I still use it from time to time (and have projects running in production with it right now), can't think of a single issue to fix or feature to add, at least from my perspective, it pretty much does what it should without issues.

[delusional]

It's showing 0 for "previous stars", like it's showing data from some initial run. This is obviously broken, and not at all useful in its current state.

How is this the top post on the front page right now?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Nicely done, but I’m not convinced that “number of stars” should be the only metric. It’s not a bad one, but it naturally eschews a lot of indie stuff.

This is a chronic issue with discovery queues. I like to listen to music during my morning walks, and want to have the chance to hear new, not-yet-popular songs. I may not like a lot of them, but I want the chance to decide for myself.

[IshKebab]

Yeah provide a way to filter out AI-related repos and I'm sold! I guess you could use AI to do that...

Also tone down the ads.

[zxcholmes]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll work on adding filter options and toning down the ads.

[normie3000]

Of the top ~20 repos I checked, they were all either AI-related or old/archived/deprecated.

[zxcholmes]

You're right, I should filter out old/archived/deprecated repositories to keep the list active.

[rkwasny]

Where so I get an RSS feed with weekly updates?

[ramon156]

I kind of hate how easy it is to spot a generated frontend. All AI's use the same styling.

Numbers with gradients, big shadows, big cards that are way too big for your screen.

This by no means is a jab at the tool, I'm sure it's useful to some.

[zxcholmes]

You're absolutely right about the AI-generated look. I'm not a UI designer, so I relied too heavily on AI for the frontend. I should probably study designs from other websites and create something more custom instead. Thanks for the feedback!

[magnio]

> You're absolutely right

Perfect satire. Thank you.

[GreenWatermelon]

I'm beginning to doubt that it's actually satire...

[userbinator]

I'll say it bluntly: Software development should not be a popularity contest.

[zxcholmes]

I think popularity to some extent represents what people are paying attention to and the technologies that are gaining traction. While it shouldn't be the only factor in evaluating software quality, it can serve as a valuable indicator of community interest and emerging trends in the tech landscape.