Hacker News Reader

You know, the original Readability was in Python. You could eliminate your Node dependency by moving to it, I'd think.

I didn't know. I thought it was based on Arc90's original code from 2010, but I imagined that was js.

I initially was using the python port by ReadabiliPy, but it wasn't working as well as the js code in most of my tests, so I just switched.

But yeah, open to exploring different options to make it less complex.

Huh, you are correct. I guess a better way to put this is "the original Readability I encountered was in Python"! The first version I saw was in Aaron Swartz's 2012 read2text tool, but a check of the URL I found that through says, yup, it's a Python port of Arc90's original code, which was a browser extension.

And you're right. It was in JavaScript. I finally tracked a copy down (the original is long evaporated): https://github.com/masukomi/arc90-readability/blob/master/js...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com