16 Year Old Isaac Moldofsky Builds Reddit Parser with Twilio SMS

16 Year Old Isaac Moldofsky Builds Reddit Parser with Twilio SMS

Isaac Moldofsky is a teenager who beat the odds. He is 16. He is on summer break. He has unfettered access to reddit. Typically, this is a recipe for a summer full of cat gifs and little productivity. But, Isaac is not typical.

While working as an intern/teaching assistant at Dev Bootcamp in Chicago, Isaac taught himself Python (in a day) and built a reddit parser to make browsing reddit headlines easy whether you’re on a smartphone or a feature phone with Twilio SMS
Here’s how you use Isaac’s app which he dubbed “THOr”: (Text Hot On reddit)

• Text ‘hi’ to 747 222 1936
• Text a subreddit name followed the number of results you want to see. For example, I texted “Drums 2” to get 2 results back from r/drums
• Enjoy your reddit binge

You can also say ‘drums post 2’ to get more info about the 2nd post in r/drums. This doesn’t work with all subreddits yet, Isaac is still working on that.

Isaac’s app uses Flask/Heroku, Twilio, and PRAW (Reddit). “I got inspired by this just by looking at some PRAW examples,” says Isaac. His inspiration paid off. The app got the attention of Reddit General Manager Erik Martin who tweeted the hack from reddit’s Twitter handle.