This API is extremely unreliable and has a great deal of functionality missing as well (commenting, voting). The original developer is also no longer maintaining it. I tried to build an Hacker News app using it some time ago and abandoned the idea very quickly.
I have been using it for a few years now. It does give a error quite often (1 out of 10 requests on average), but for what I'm using, it is pretty solid (as long as I retry when these errors occur).
The lack of functionality: it had it. The problem is that it not only required user/password, but it also was caught into HN's safety net, that prevents multiple accounts from the same IP to do a lot of stuff.
So it can work as library, but not as a server-side API. Therefore he removed it.
For another project of mine[1], I used Hacker News search API[2], which is really consistent, and really powerful, and is maintained by the the yc company that does ThriftDB[3]
The reason that it's so unreliable is that my server's IP address gets banned by YC when the requests are to fast, and I have it hosted on a small cheap server. There are ways around this, but it just isn't worth the time or money.
