> the API leaves a lot to be desired
Yes, it does. We're going to make a new API that gives you a simple JSON version of any HN URL. Would that address any of the concerns you encountered?
Oh, that would be amazing. I wanted to do an analysis of top level, second level, etc comments, but I looked at the API and thought better of it.
The main problems I had were:
1. The stories endpoints were limited to 200 or 500 results, not paginated.
2. I had to loop over and send a request to all the individual stories to check if the url was from github or gitlab.
3. There was not an endpoint for "show new" (/shownew)
4. It was unclear from the docs what is shown on the website homepage (beststories or topstories?)