Show HN: Etlas, an elegant and Pythonic port scanner

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2 points·hawth··3 comments

So, any time someone comes up with a new program in an established space, I wonder why?

Personally, if you’re going to choose to do that anyway, one of the first things I would like to see you explain is what your reasoning is for doing so. Is the current leader too hard to use? Too expensive? Is this just an exercise to see if you can do it?

Start with these questions relative to nmap versus your program. Doing a programming exercise just to see if you can do it is a totally valid reason to do something. But I think you want to be clear and explicit about this from the start.

If people never competed with established products, there wouldn't be any established products. I wanted a clean, thin, customisable port scanner, so I built one. I didn't waste my time worrying about nmap or whatever else exists, I just made something I wanted and thought (perhaps naively) that someone else might want it too.

Honestly people like you really annoy me; programming is such a delightful and social art, but teaching people "don't reinvent the wheel" just results in a generation of people who don't give a shit about wheels.

This is my first major project, please feel free to critique and offer suggestions for new/better features. Thank you!

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