4 ms·

What's the practical use of a high star count?

phamilton 8y ago
If I'm looking for a library and I find two that do what I need, I generally go with the one with the higher star count because it signals a larger community and therefore it's more likely to get some bug fixes and improvements.
- dlor 8y ago
  Can you give an example of yourself making this choice and star count being the deciding factor?
  - phamilton 8y ago
    I don't choose entirely based on stars, but I'll take a look at the one with more stars first. An example is https://github.com/indexzero/node-portfinder https://github.com/indexzero/node-portfinder vs https://github.com/sindresorhus/get-port https://github.com/sindresorhus/get-port I have very little interest in most of the differences in features, and the cost of switching is low in the future. So I'll just go with node-portfinder because it has more stars. ( I also notice the forks count is higher)
- philbo 8y ago
  I don't think GitHub stars a reliable indicator of community size. They are often an indicator of how much effort someone has put into promoting the library on social media. Some people have starred thousands of repos that they only ever looked at once when they saw it on the front page of HN (I know, because I'm one of them). A quick read of the source, tests, documentation, issues etc provide better information than counting stars in my experience.
  - frou_dh 8y ago
    > Some people have starred thousands of repos that they only ever looked at once when they saw it on the front page of HN (I know, because I'm one of them). If you ever want to process and try and extract some value from those, I recommend this: https://astralapp.com/ https://astralapp.com/
edflsafoiewq 8y ago
"And what do you do with five-hundred millions of stars?" "Five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one. I am concerned with matters of consequence: I am accurate." "And what do you do with these stars?" "What do I do with them?" "Yes." "Nothing. I own them."
mihaifm 8y ago
Sometimes it gives you some motivation or moral support to keep developing the software. I often see people open feature requests but don't even bother to give a star. If I put a repository out there that just works for me, I'm less motivated to spend extra time to accommodate features for other people. It's free software, there's no monetization like the view count on youtube, the least you can do to support the developer is give a star.
crdoconnor 8y ago
Getting people to use your open source software. People have a marked preference for popular open source software. * It's a signal of quality even if it isn't always the best signal, and developers won't necessarily allocate the time to investigate the quality of a package on a deep level. * CYA: more stars indicates more popularity which indicates that your choice to use XYZ with 1000 stars is more defensible than the ABC package with 5. * It suggests that the package will be maintained and improved rather than abandoned.
jondubois 8y ago
The more stars your project has, the more likely people and companies are going to use it. Stars represent trust. When it comes to adoption of an open source project, trust is everything.
- dajonker 8y ago
  Which is terrible. Some people think because a github repo has a certain amount of stars they don't have to actually think or look at the actual code in that repo. I've seen devs frowning at github repositories because they "only had x stars" or recommending to "pick the library one with most github stars" as if that would be the best fit for your need.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    I agree but very large companies go to extreme lengths to minimize risk in their code so number of stars makes sense from that perspective. What annoys me more is when statups refuse to use a library because it's not being used by any well known company. Then the open source library never gets any opportunity at all to prove itself; not even in a niche of small startups... It's like being homeless; nobody will give you a job no matter how good you are because you stink like failure.

If I'm looking for a library and I find two that do what I need, I generally go with the one with the higher star count because it signals a larger community and therefore it's more likely to get some bug fixes and improvements.

dlor 8y ago
Can you give an example of yourself making this choice and star count being the deciding factor?
- phamilton 8y ago
  I don't choose entirely based on stars, but I'll take a look at the one with more stars first. An example is https://github.com/indexzero/node-portfinder https://github.com/indexzero/node-portfinder vs https://github.com/sindresorhus/get-port https://github.com/sindresorhus/get-port I have very little interest in most of the differences in features, and the cost of switching is low in the future. So I'll just go with node-portfinder because it has more stars. ( I also notice the forks count is higher)
philbo 8y ago
I don't think GitHub stars a reliable indicator of community size. They are often an indicator of how much effort someone has put into promoting the library on social media. Some people have starred thousands of repos that they only ever looked at once when they saw it on the front page of HN (I know, because I'm one of them). A quick read of the source, tests, documentation, issues etc provide better information than counting stars in my experience.
- frou_dh 8y ago
  > Some people have starred thousands of repos that they only ever looked at once when they saw it on the front page of HN (I know, because I'm one of them). If you ever want to process and try and extract some value from those, I recommend this: https://astralapp.com/ https://astralapp.com/

edflsafoiewq 8y ago

"And what do you do with five-hundred millions of stars?" "Five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one. I am concerned with matters of consequence: I am accurate." "And what do you do with these stars?" "What do I do with them?" "Yes." "Nothing. I own them."

mihaifm 8y ago

Sometimes it gives you some motivation or moral support to keep developing the software. I often see people open feature requests but don't even bother to give a star. If I put a repository out there that just works for me, I'm less motivated to spend extra time to accommodate features for other people. It's free software, there's no monetization like the view count on youtube, the least you can do to support the developer is give a star.

crdoconnor 8y ago

Getting people to use your open source software. People have a marked preference for popular open source software. * It's a signal of quality even if it isn't always the best signal, and developers won't necessarily allocate the time to investigate the quality of a package on a deep level. * CYA: more stars indicates more popularity which indicates that your choice to use XYZ with 1000 stars is more defensible than the ABC package with 5. * It suggests that the package will be maintained and improved rather than abandoned.

jondubois 8y ago

The more stars your project has, the more likely people and companies are going to use it. Stars represent trust. When it comes to adoption of an open source project, trust is everything.

dajonker 8y ago
Which is terrible. Some people think because a github repo has a certain amount of stars they don't have to actually think or look at the actual code in that repo. I've seen devs frowning at github repositories because they "only had x stars" or recommending to "pick the library one with most github stars" as if that would be the best fit for your need.
- jondubois 8y ago
  I agree but very large companies go to extreme lengths to minimize risk in their code so number of stars makes sense from that perspective. What annoys me more is when statups refuse to use a library because it's not being used by any well known company. Then the open source library never gets any opportunity at all to prove itself; not even in a niche of small startups... It's like being homeless; nobody will give you a job no matter how good you are because you stink like failure.