TLDR; It's a ruby script you can run locally to find an available Twitter handle. You need a Twitter Developer Account. I was surprised by how many handles are suspended.
Hi HN,
I'm new here, I was inspired by the "What has HN given you?"[1] post so thought I'd share something I put together late last year after a frustrating few hours trying to find a Twitter handle. It's a Ruby script you can run locally to find a new Twitter handle if you're a new user (can't be many of those on HN) or just want a better handle. I found it quite difficult to find an available handle I was happy with, even using this tool – over 50% of handles I checked were suspended [2].
I'm currently re-skilling after doing quite a bit of basic development work using Classic ASP in early 2000s. That business did ok so I ended up spending all my time on management and sales and regret not keeping up with developments in programming – crikey you guys have been busy! The learning curve has been steep.
I'd really welcome any feedback on how I could have structured the code better. I don't plan to offer this as a service because it would just get obliterated by bots but hopefully it comes in useful for someone.
1 comment
[ 280 ms ] story [ 671 ms ] threadHi HN,
I'm new here, I was inspired by the "What has HN given you?"[1] post so thought I'd share something I put together late last year after a frustrating few hours trying to find a Twitter handle. It's a Ruby script you can run locally to find a new Twitter handle if you're a new user (can't be many of those on HN) or just want a better handle. I found it quite difficult to find an available handle I was happy with, even using this tool – over 50% of handles I checked were suspended [2].
I'm currently re-skilling after doing quite a bit of basic development work using Classic ASP in early 2000s. That business did ok so I ended up spending all my time on management and sales and regret not keeping up with developments in programming – crikey you guys have been busy! The learning curve has been steep.
I'd really welcome any feedback on how I could have structured the code better. I don't plan to offer this as a service because it would just get obliterated by bots but hopefully it comes in useful for someone.
Thanks,
Elliott
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16409768 2. https://medium.com/@ElliottInvent/becoming-a-new-twitter-use...