Okay, so I wanted to mess around with this “alex star stats” thing I saw floating around. Basically, it seems like a way to check out how many stars someone has on their GitHub repositories. I figured, why not give it a shot and see what all the fuss is about?
Getting Started
First things first, I needed to find this tool. A quick search led me to, well, I can’t really share the link, but you know, it’s out there. It turned out to be a command-line tool, meaning I had to use my computer’s terminal. I’m not a super techy person, but I can usually fumble my way through this stuff.
Installation
The instructions said I needed to install it using npm. I already had * and npm set up on my computer from a previous project, so that part was easy. I just typed in something like:
npm install -g the-tool-name
That `-g` part is important, because it installs the tool globally, so I can use it from anywhere on my computer.
Running the Tool
Once it was installed, it was time to give it a spin. The basic command looked something like this:
the-tool-name username
Of course, I replaced “username” with my actual GitHub username. Hit enter, and boom! It started spitting out a bunch of information. It listed all my public repositories, along with the number of stars each one had. Pretty cool, huh?
Playing Around
I tried it with a few other usernames, just to see what would happen. Some people have a ton of stars! It was interesting to see which projects were the most popular. It gave me a little insight into what kinds of things people are interested in on GitHub.
Sorting by Stars
Then I tried to get all repositories sorted by the amount of stars each repository has.
I found that I have to add option after username:
the-tool-name username -s
My Thoughts
Overall, it was a fun little experiment. It’s not something I’d use every day, but it was neat to get a quick overview of my GitHub “popularity,” so to speak. And it was a good excuse to play around with the command line a bit, which is always a good skill to practice.
If you’re curious about your own GitHub stats, or just want to see how many stars your favorite developers have, I’d say give it a try. It’s pretty straightforward, and you might learn something new!
