--- title: "Disappointed with RSS Bandit" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/4/disappointed-with-rss-bandit.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/4/disappointed-with-rss-bandit.html" published: "2004-01-04T16:26:00" updated: "2004-01-04T16:26:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I didn't expect for this to happen. RSS Bandit just gave me a huge disappointment. I really thought this was it , that it works OK now, but I was wrong. Out of about 150 feeds, RSS Bandit can't parse 22 of them. And not…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Disappointed with RSS Bandit By Roy Osherove January 4, 2004 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published January 4, 2004; technical details may be outdated. I didn't expect for this to happen. [RSS Bandit](http://www.rssbandit.org/) just gave me a huge disappointment. I really thought [this was it](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f600bfaa-5643-42ae-82b8-8a2f4c0ca911), that it works OK now, but I was wrong. Out of about 150 feeds, RSS Bandit can't parse 22 of them. And not esoteric ones either: [Jermemy](http://www.eskimo.com/~jeremyk/index.rdf),[HackNot](http://www.hacknot.info/servlet/HS?cmd=rss),[Feedster](http://www.feedster.com/rss.php?q=ISerializable&sort=date&ie=UTF-8),[Dino](http://weblogs.asp.net/despos/Rss.aspx),[Brain.Save()](http://hyperthink.net/blog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss) and a good few more. These are all feeds that work very well in [sharpreader](http://sharpreader.net/). Now, the only thing I can think of is that these feeds do not conform to all the rules an RSS needs to conform to. That means that RSS bandit is somehow too '"strict" enforcing those rules (just a guess). If I can still get these feeds some other place you can be sure [that's](http://sharpreader.net/) the path I'll take. Sorry, [Dare](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/). I really wanted to, but I can't give up some of my feeds, no matter how many cool features you have. Also, this post comes right after Dare has [patiently answered all of my pet peeves](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f600bfaa-5643-42ae-82b8-8a2f4c0ca911) about RSS Bandit. Unfortunately, at the time of writing the review, I did not notice the single biggest problem .Sorry again. I really hate to be a party pooper, but I'm sure Dare will take this criticism as it was given: in the hope of a better product. :( ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Jan 9, 2004 ### [Common rants and misconceptions](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/9/common-rants-and-misconceptions.html) - Jan 7, 2004 ### [Small cool news](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/7/small-cool-news.html) - Jan 3, 2004 ### [Good design is easily recognizable. Everywhere.](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/3/good-design-is-easily-recognizable-everywhere.html) - Jan 3, 2004 ### [Moving to RSS Bandit: A simple review](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/3/moving-to-rss-bandit-a-simple-review.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/