Alright, let’s talk about this `shiinabr / twitter` thing I fiddled with recently. I was looking for something, anything really, to make handling some Twitter tasks less painful. You know how it is, sometimes you just want a simple tool.
So I stumbled upon this `shiinabr / twitter` code somewhere. Looked potentially useful, maybe for automating replies or pulling some specific tweets, I wasn’t even sure, the description was kinda vague. First step, get the code onto my machine. Downloaded the zip, unpacked it.
Trying to Figure it Out
Okay, files are there. Now what? There wasn’t a clear readme file, not one that told you `start here, do this`. Just a bunch of code files, mostly Python it looked like. I guessed which one might be the main script to run. Standard procedure, right? Just dive in.
Ran the script. Boom, errors. Of course. Missing libraries. Standard stuff. So I started installing them. `pip install whatever`. But then it got tricky. Some libraries needed specific versions, but the code didn’t say which ones. Had to guess a bit, based on error messages and when the code seemed to be last touched. This part took way longer than it should have. Maybe an hour just getting Python happy.
- Found the likely main script.
- Ran it, got errors.
- Installed missing stuff.
- Guessed some versions.
- Finally got it to start without immediate crashing.
Running the Thing
Okay, setup done, sort of. Time to actually use it. It needed Twitter API keys, obviously. Dug those out from my developer account, plugged them into the config file, or maybe it was directly in the script, I forget. It was messy.
Fired it up again. It seemed to connect, printed something like `Connected!` or whatever. Good sign? Maybe. Then… nothing. It just sat there. Cursor blinking. No output, no errors, just… silence.
I tried feeding it some commands based on the script names, like `get_tweets` or `post_reply`. Sometimes it would just eat the command and do nothing. Other times it threw some weird, unhelpful error message. Like `KeyError: ‘data’` or something equally cryptic. No clue what data it was missing.
I even poked around the code itself a bit. Man, that was tough going. Lots of short variable names, functions doing god-knows-what. No comments explaining the logic. It felt like someone’s personal scratchpad, not something meant for others to use easily. I wasn’t about to spend hours deciphering it.
So, What’s the Verdict?
End result? I wasted a good few hours. Couldn’t get it to reliably do anything useful. Maybe it works for the person who wrote it, Shiinabr. Maybe it worked for a very specific task they had back then. But for me, trying to adapt it? Total dead end.
It’s like many tools you find floating around. They look like they might solve your problem, but the setup is a nightmare, or they’re undocumented, or just plain broken. Sometimes you strike gold, other times you just strike out.
This `shiinabr / twitter` thing? For me, it was a strikeout. Back to the drawing board, or just doing things manually. Sometimes the old ways are less frustrating, you know?
