Member-only story
To Clone or Not to Clone?
The question of cloning software or consuming what’s available
A few years ago, I was trying to follow a particular website’s articles on Instapaper — to get daily alerts with some kind of third party service or script. However, the site’s feed configuration wasn’t working with any feed tool for Instapaper (even this IFTTT script), or any other RSS Readers for that matter.
At the same time, I wanted to learn Python. As I got further into it, I started exploring some open source stuff out there and started connecting dots as to how I might write my own solution.
To make a long story short, I created ArticlesOfEase, which perfectly consumed the unique RSS configuration. However, it didn’t stop there. It also scraped articles (similar to Instapaper), returning them and their details to a JSON, ready to be consumed by an InstaCLONE (so to speak), should I ever venture to build it. It was fun, instrumental for learning Python, and rewarding to not only have made something but have it custom-built for my needs.
It also left me feeling slightly guilty.
My Dilemma
After I putting the finishing touches, posting on Github, and fantasizing what would come next, I started to question the existence of what I just wrote. The reason? It felt like I had stepped on the toes of existing work.
Of course, I understood I was making a mountain out of a barely recognizable ant-hill, but I was curious. As I pondered about other possibilities I might have taken, I realized that I could have attempted to reach out to existing providers to see if they were interested in bridging the gap somehow.
Possible solutions
One route was to write to the website and let them know that their feed was not compatible with a tool that could connect them with an app many people use for their reading material every day. This awareness could lead to a change in their feed format, giving them more automated traffic and viewership.
