Show HN: Bungholio – Get text messages when a product is available on Amazon

[richwellman20]

Best program name ever. We can all use some Beavis humor these days.

[sk5t]

It took a moment to get the zeitgeist connection--one of Cornholio's few intelligible phrases is "I need TP for my bunghole."

Wikipedia used to host a comically erudite page about Cornholio, e.g. studiously noting such discrepancies in his speech such as "my people have no bunghole" / "my people have but one bunghole".

[circa]

I already cannot wait for v2.0 - The Great Cornholio!

[atonse]

Totally agree. I had quite a chuckle!

[brianpursley]

This reminds me of a little Visual Basic program I hacked together about 20 years ago when I wanted to buy a PlayStation 2 but there was a shortage after it launched.

Every 5 minutes, my program would make a request to the product page on Amazon and look for the text "out of stock". If it didn't find it, the program would sound off an alarm bell.

I still remember sitting nearby, watching TV one night when the alarm went off. I jumped up and ran over to my computer and bought myself a PS2.

As silly as it sounds, what I remember most fondly about the PlayStation 2 was making and using this little program to help buy it.

[jspash]

I'm not trying to troll, so please hear me out.

But has Javascript become so universally liked that it's the go-to tool for quick one-off scripts like this? Is it really much better or easier that you would choose it over, say Python or just a shell script?

Or is it that Javascript happens to be the best tool for this particular job?

I guess what I'm asking is, do most people reach for JS/Node over other languages for this type of thing? I suppose I still don't see it outside of the browser environment but maybe it's time to change that view.

[greggman3]

I used to write scripts in python. I switched to node. Benefits for me.

1. Python by default requires tons of globally installed libraries. Node by default all libraries are installed local the the project. Nothing to learn. It just does it. That means I don't have to worry about trashing my system and I don't have to tell users a bunch of prerequisites to get it to work.

2. Node is ~8meg and installs instantly. Python is 18-30meg and the install has a long build process IIRC

I will still sometimes reach for python. I needed to parse an 8 gig geodata XML file. The libraries I tried in node were orders of magnitude slower than python for that particular task. I did try node first though since it's where I'm at.

[impostervt]

I'm a JS developer so it's my go-to. See Atwood's law:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-principle-of-least-power/

[nicoburns]

It's basically equivalently easy to a python script. JavaScript and Python have almost identical semantics. I'd usuallty reach for node over python because I write JavaScript everyday at $dayjob, and I can I can do so almost without concious effort. Whereas I write python much less often, so it'd slow me down a little as I forget and have to look up details of the syntax, the names of functions, etc. I'm also much less familiar with the python library ecosystem, so I'd need to reaearch whichlibraries to use. Presumably a python developer would have this in reverse.

Bash is different. It's good for stringing toghether external commands, but rapidly becomes a mess if you need to do any complex data manipulation. Argument parsing in bash is also a pain.

[sneak]

There are many programmers working today who only know Javascript. I can’t speak to whether that’s the situation with OP or not, but it is common to see tools that I personally would write in Python being written today in JS, even sometimes by experienced polyglot programmers. I don’t know about “most”, but it is quite common. It surprised me a bit too, the first time I encountered it.

I don’t think it has much to do with “liked” or “best tool for the job” as much as it is simply “prevalent” or “popular”.

[arrmn]

Nearly all public repos of the devloper are using mainly JS, so I assume he's a JS dev and thus just uses the tools he knows the best.

[bryanrasmussen]

There are many quick one-off scripts that have no specifically best tool to implement them in, this totally seems like one of them.

I would reach for python if I needed some advanced text analysis - like nltk, spacy level - but otherwise I would reach for whatever language I was trying to improve my skills in or whatever language I was using the most in other projects so as to not have to context switch so much.

[jdellinger]

While I generally agree that you should use the best tool for the job, for small and simple scripts I see nothing wrong with picking a language your comfortable with.

I wonder, why do you think python is a better alternative? I would understand bash since it is dependency free, but I don't see any advantage for python vs. nodejs

[hn_throwaway_99]

The Amazon app lets me register for push messages when products become available. Why wouldn't I just use that?

[artificial]

Well, this way it can be recreated in another language, for shakes 8ball fun!

[conroydave]

i need this except for delivery windows on wholefoods and amazon fresh

[sneak]

Instacart and Postmates still seem to work, I'm told.

(I won't outsource mortal danger to someone poorer than I simply because they need the money more, and I don't want to give Instacart any of my business since they got busted stealing their delivery staff's tips, but those are your options if you want them.)

[protean]

this sorta works for whole foods: https://github.com/mark-thompson/whole-foods-deliverance

[ErikAugust]

Ha, I was thinking about building this. I was able to get an order in through periodic refreshing of the delivery time selection page.

[libraryatnight]

seriously, I see prime now deliveries getting to my neighbors, how are they getting a delivery window? I haven't seen one in two weeks. I don't even really need it anymore, my wife and I just check for fun.

[lgats]

second

[sam1r]

I wish i saw more of these one-off creative creations on a regular basis. Is there a reason why this is not a "Show:hn"?

[dang]

I've added it to the title.

[spiritplumber]

Truly we needed this in these times of TP shortage.

[DeathArrow]

Does it use an API or it scrapes the Amazon website? If it's the latter how do you avoid being blocked?

[mkranjec]

It scrapes Amazon websitewith Puppeteer.

[staticautomatic]

Are you the owner of bunghol.io?

[richrichardsson]

So disappointed there was no content at that domain.

[kangaroozach]

Lol

[doggodad]

Obligatory: Shut-up, Beavis.

[JadeNB]

I'm not normally one to carp about product names—there was a semi-jokey discussion about calling a shared-viewing product 'Covideo' that bothered some people, but I didn't think it was such a big deal—but surely we can do better than this?

Oh, well. As always with open source, it's my place to be grateful for the work you share (thank you!), not to complain about your not doing it on my terms.

[vortico]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHv2dIM3t9I

[klyrs]

This is a generational thing. Just as my mom won't expect me to understand "where's the beef?", I don't expect her or my students to understand this reference.

But for my generation, a more perfect name has never been devised.

[brailsafe]

I dare you to come up with a better name. This is great.

[p1necone]

This isn't a product, this is someones spare time non commercial open source project that they're sharing for other developers to use. If the name bothers you just clone the repo and change it.

[sneak]

The streets will flow with the blood of the nonbelievers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY7NE_jSk5w

[MisterTea]

Man, who whacked off in your toolshed... so salty.

[donarb]

A sure way to guarantee that Apple won't buy your startup.