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Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#431

Post by Twirrim »

Routinely.

I played a D&D character that was, until recently, about as stupid as they could come. Think "Makes Forest Gump look intelligent". A monk who quoted scripture at random that had zero relation to the matter at hand. Never got anyone's name right (always got the first letter right)

So I wrote a discord bot. First in python, then eventually in rust (just because). The bot has a few commands, one to return a random quote from a database, one to add a quote to the database, and one to return a random name that starts with the specified letter.

Of course, things being what they are in D&D, he's suddenly a lot smarter, and the bot is no longer useful. Fun though, an interesting learning exercise.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#432

Post by iku »

linsomniac wrote: post #369

Decades ago I had a friend that needed to scan his CD cover to start selling it online. I only had a Linux machine. So I looked up the documentation for the HP scanners, found it was well documented at the protocol level, so I bought one. I wrote some CLI tool that could trigger a scan and read the data back, into a file. Worked well enough, but I wanted a GUI. I started thinking I wanted to make a GUI for it. I star…

Wow. Thanks for this story.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#433

Post by tastyfreeze »

lobocinza wrote: post #253
edpenz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A secure-but-readable password generator I love pronounceable passwords, but there's research indicating that such generators typically produce lower than expected entropy. Do you mind sharing what algorithm you use?

Sometimes I use passages from books. Easy to remember a >60 char password, can always check the book and it brings back to memory a book that I enjoyed each time I use it. For PINs I like to use a long sequence of digits of a physical/mathematical constant.

Just FYI, if there is an incentive to get your password, there are existing programs to match arbitrary length strings from books or any text source. One such program has been used to steal cryptocurrency from wallets that are generated from a passphrase like NXT.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#434

Post by andrelaszlo »

- Bookmarking tool with free-text search.

- Web page diff notifier with various heuristics, sms/email notifications, screenshot logging, and js page support.

- Linux keyboard macro tool.

- Dozens of scripts that I use daily to automate parts of my desktop, eg detecting where my laptop is plugged in (or not) and change the display setup, backups, grabbing the local weather report from the most reliable source, etc.

- Simple password manager with Google Secret Manager as a backend.

- A whole bunch of user scripts that fix issues on web sites that I use frequently.

- One or two browser extensions that also fixes web sites. Keyboard shortcuts for the HBO video player. Intercepting requests for certain web sites to swap some calls to a different backend.

- Fork that adds some features to a screen locker.

- Random name generator based on Markov chains in combination with user input and randomness.

And many more! It was fun to see what others are doing, thanks for sharing, everyone.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#436

Post by bitwize »

I used to maintain a blog/personal site with a collection of Guile scripts.

These days, mostly I write little Emacs Lisp programs to provide nice (meaning Emacs-compatible) interfaces to tasks I have to do at work, like setting up and managing local Docker containers and running SQL queries.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#437

Post by emacs28 »

The most polished and useful program I've made for personal use is an emacs minor mode that lets you scroll down top lines in a file. I was tired of having to always look all the way at the top of the editor window to read the top lines of a file or small files.

https://github.com/trevorpogue/topspace

I also made a Python tree data structure library to easily parse and read tree structures which I actively use in other personal projects.

https://github.com/trevorpogue/sections

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#439

Post by anhner »

tommek4077 wrote: post #417
ajkjk wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm an engineer. I'd guess that neither I nor most of my coworkers do. It's much more common amongst lower-level engineers than, say, product engineers. Heck, I work full time in Python + Typescript and I don't even know Bash. I never even have things I want to script. Most of my time is spent making sense of code, not doing any sort of complicated repeatable task.

So, what are you engineering? Ci/cd pipelines with ready made tools?

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

#440

Post by nickm12 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #87

Hundreds! Doesn't everyone? Most of them are just bash scripts, many of which have now reached a complexity so high that I wish I'd started writing them in a different language but it's too late now. The majority of the rest are Python. Off the top of my head, the most used ones are: * A replacement front-end for "tar" and various compressors * A script to synchronize my music library to a compressed version for play…

Yeah, I think OP might be more interested in "what is the most elaborate program you wrote only for your personal use?" Most of my personal programs have been command-line script. I have written a couple of single-page web apps and a Mac app once. These were more learning projects than programs I used long term.
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