I pretty much stopped writing code for myself/as a hobby when I started writing code as my day job. There really is something about losing passion for a hobby once it becomes work, at least in my case.
Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
101–110 of 484 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#102As a freelancer I invoice in multiple currencies, and I couldn't find a program to generate them that wasn't an overly complex $100/mo SaaS. So I build a little cli to generate my invoices. 100 loc and super simple. I miss the 70s when programming was the default way to solve problems. Excessive abstractions and proprietary software often slow us down.
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Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#103As a freelancer I invoice in multiple currencies, and I couldn't find a program to generate them that wasn't an overly complex $100/mo SaaS. So I build a little cli to generate my invoices. 100 loc and super simple. I miss the 70s when programming was the default way to solve problems. Excessive abstractions and proprietary software often slow us down.
My (polish) bank gives invoicing software for free and obviously you can put whatever currency you want.
Bank is called millenium bank.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#104Coded a microcontroller that allows me to open my gate using my phone so I don't have to carry the gate remote around. Also convenient when I have guests.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#105I've written a bunch of web apps, extensions and bots to help me with tasks, taking notes on articles and books.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#106If you count a bunch of individual shell scripts for text processing then yeah. A bunch. I still use a lot of scripts I built like 15 years ago. Every now and then I make tiny changes but yeah I still use them a lot. I'd say 40% of the software I've ever built has been for me.
I'd say it's a rite of passage to write software for yourself:
1) It gives new programmers some practice.
2) It can help you understand software development better.
3) It reinforces the concept of dogfooding what you create (even though in this case others won't get to use your software). Again, making you better developer. You'd be surprised how many people write programs that they barely use or test. Never really knowing how useful it is or isn't to others.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#107What does it do? I built a bot that runs every 2 weeks, scrapes my local movie theater's currently playing titles, runs them against rotten tomatoes to filter out movies rated below 85%, then looks them up on youtube and posts the trailers to my discord server How did you make it? Python script that runs in google cloud functions, triggered on a bi-weekly schedule How much time you spent making it? An evening How oft…
might have to replicate this one...
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#108Back in the day, I had a laptop with only 4 GB of RAM, which would run out if I'd open too many browser tabs or programs. I didn't have an external monitor always connected, nor were most of the tray monitoring solutions to my liking. So instead I wrote a program that would create a few semi-transparent windows in the OS, snap them to the sides of the screen, allow clicks to pass through and resize them as the resource usage would change.
A blue full sized bar on the left size of the screen? The CPU is under 100% load. A purple bar on the right side of the screen, that reaches 3/4 of the way up? Guess my RAM usage is getting close to the limit, better not get too eager with the tabs, maybe close a program.
It actually wasn't that bad, but shortly after I just bought some more RAM. That was also before I had my own Gogs or Gitea instance, so I don't think I have the source anymore, it wasn't too hard to do on Windows though (nowadays I'd probably just put Linux Mint on the system or something, it needs a bit less memory in general). Oh, also now I have like 4 monitors for my main PC and don't do too much computing on the go. The 8 GB MacBook that I have for when I'm out and about feels rather slim, though.
Aside from that, there's the CMS I use for my website, though I'm not showing it to anyone because it's so bad that it makes me want to climb into a hole and disappear off the face of the planet. It still works though, so I don't necessarily see myself changing it out for something else just yet.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#109I write little Python scripts (or use Excel) to simulate computer/video game mechanics and quickly iterate over them before passing them off to a real programmer. I also design boardgames, so often write die rollers to calculate probabilities (it's faster for me to write something that generates hundreds of thousands of results than to actually do the math, especially if I want to tweak in real time).
My bad habit is not properly archiving these little programs, so I invariably end up recreating them from scratch each time.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?
#110I wrote some scripts that convert my Quickbooks accounting data into detailed reports that are insightful to me and beautifully printable