Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#1

Post by JNRowe » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:13 AM UTC

Last February there was, in my opinion, a really uplifting thread with the same title¹. I'd like to see all the cool new things going on, and I'll steal the intro text from as89 to explain:

One where you don't care if it makes money or gets a lot of attention, but you are working on it regardless. I don't think I mean private hobbies, exactly, but projects that could or will be shared with others - you just don't care about the outcome.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25992782

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#2

Post by catsarebetter » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

I have a blog that I write hshidara.com that I don't care about doing well. My mind tends to wander and I have a hard time articulating and forming abstract ideas verbally, usually I need to write it out in a journal, but this helps me get my thoughts even more in order because of the public nature of the content creating more social pressure to get it right.

I have a tools section where I make small edge-case tools for myself, I host it on Render and use django admin so I can get away without having tons of core functionality in my tools. Technically they're MVPs that I launch on PH, but they never do well, but they're still useful to me and the problems it solves in my own life.

But to answer you more seriously, I'm my own "I don't care if this succeeds" project. I don't think that I'm particularly smart or talented but I'm still young and excitable and exploring my own nature through software. Hopefully I'll make something that's really valuable to the world one day, but for now I learn, build, meet new people, fail, and grow. And that makes me happy.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#3

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:17 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#4

Post by seanwilson » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:17 AM UTC

Here's a word game I'm still tweaking you can play in the browser for people that like time-based challenges (top score I've seen is about 3000 points!):

https://seanwilson.itch.io/wordoid

Working on games without thinking about how you might monitise them is a fun way to spend some time. :) It's a nice feeling to know some other people got some fun out of something you made too.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#5

Post by givemeethekeys » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

A few years back YouTube didn't support the sharing of playlists. In-fact creating playlists took far too many clicks. Fortunately, their API support was good and I built a 3rd party playlist builder, which worked brilliantly. I built it for myself and didn't care if anyone else used it. Turned out people did use it, but I didn't find out until YouTube changed their APIs and I no longer had time to work on it.

A few years later, I learned that most Craigslist ads sucked. So, I created a simple "make your craigslist ads better" tool. You'd go to the site, fill out a much better form than the one Craigslist provided, and it'd spit out a much better ad that you could copy and paste. Then, whenever I saw a car ad that was crappy, I'd message them with a link to my tool and ask them to update the ad. People did it and it was growing organically. I was glad that people found it useful.. it was free and going to stay that way forever. Then I got a Cease and Desist from Craigslist.. for using their name, I think. They've made similar boneheaded decisions.. no wonder they're declining.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#6

Post by alexnastase » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:27 AM UTC

I was a bit annoyed I couldn't use keyboard shortcuts in most online json formatters so I build my own mostly for my personal use. After a while I got the idea to ask the guy who owns jsonformatter.com if he wants to host it and after a while he got on board. So there you go : https://jsonformatter.com/

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#7

Post by alexmingoia » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:32 AM UTC

Mine is https://sumi.news. I use it, others use it, and I consider that a success.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#8

Post by sandreas » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 8:34 AM UTC

My devtools with svelte and webasm: https://pilabor.com/dev/#/

I use it to generate passwords, hashes, colors and base64 encodings :-) I plan to add more stuff in the future...

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#9

Post by livinglist » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 9:25 AM UTC

here is a kanji dictionary app I started making when I was in college, I was learning flutter myself and also taking Japanese classes so I figured this could be a good way to practice both my Flutter and Japanese skill, as well as having some project to be put on my resume, the code is a total mess but overall I’m pretty satisfied where this has taken me.

https://github.com/Livinglist/Manji

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#10

Post by jjuliano » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 9:28 AM UTC

A lot, I don't list them in my resume or attach a title (founder, etc.), I just did it for the fun of it or to teach my son.

active & hiatus projects (published in Google Play & Apple App Store)

https://ABCDutch.app - Various Dutch learning apps I made for my son

https://ChronoBook.app - Muji Chronotebook for iPad

https://CloudArchitect.app (see wayback) - AWS/Kubernetes/Google/Azure Cloud Whiteboard Magnets for iPad

https://SketchDesigner.app - UI/UX design tool for iPad

PencilPuzzle - Over 25k+ puzzles, pictionaries, sudoku for iPad

sunsetted projects

https://PrintableFaceMask.com (see wayback) - last option printable origami Facemask to fight COVID-19

Various auto-generative NFTs (anon. around ~6k ERC-721 NFTs minted)

Too many. https://jjuliano.github.io/jjuliano/stuff-i-did.html