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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?

#601

Post by ajkjk »

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?

Full stack stuff, more or less.

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

#602

Post by oblib »

zielsen wrote: post #527
oblib wrote: post #387

Sure... my most recent one is an app for the sport of Boxing. It's what I tinker on when I'm tired of coding on business software stuff. It's getting to be a pretty cool too. It has a "Scorecard" and database for boxers, and I've taken my first (shallow) dive into "Sports Analytics" to predict a winner of an upcoming bout, and it's working pretty good too.

Fascinated and would love to hear more! Any success so far? If you put out a write up I’d love to read it.

Thank you!

I really made it for myself, but I did set up a website last year (pugilis.com) and there is an older version there that I've made available for free. That version does not have the "MatchUps" feature though.

I'm really not a "marketing" guy but this week I started reaching out to some of the YouTube channels via email that cover boxing to see if any would want to partner with me to promote and sell the version with the analytics.

So far no one has got back to me. I think it's fair to say that boxing fans, as a group, may not be very tech savvy, and maybe even a bit intimidated by the idea of using an "app". And they may think my email is a scam. I put a link to the app in the email and they may be reluctant to click on it. Can't say I blame them if that's the case.

I think my next step is to make a video and put it on YouTube so they can see how it works and confirm it really is an app.

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

#603

Post by bgroat »

swores wrote: post #582
bgroat wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the above poster is wrong, but never ever take pricing advice from devs. Especially not devs on Hacker News. If you want to sell this (and you may not), sell into QA or product leaders. "Are you tired of deployments from your devs with dead links? A yearly license of red light is only $6k for a team of 20"

I'm not even a dev, as I said I'm just a dabbler so certainly wasn't suggesting they build a business plan around my willingness to pay, was just adding a data point in terms of hobbyist interest :)

I tried to make my comment as aggressiveness as possible, but it still sounded harsher than I wanted.

I wanted to communicate to the other poster: - You (swores), are probably correct about everything - You (swores), and I, probably aren't buyers

There may be a ton of buyers out there who aren't us

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

#604

Post by mnorris »

withinboredom wrote: post #492
mnorris wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> I quickly lose interest Working on self-directed projects didn't come naturally to me either and I had to learn how to get over this motivation issue. It's taken me 10 years of working on side projects to finally be able to figure out which things I will actually finish vs. which ones I just like the idea of and will invariably give up on. It's some combination of what do I think is useful to myself or others, wh…

Is there somewhere we can purchase/play the game? I'd be interested in giving it a shot!

Thanks!

It's called Wrds. There's a web app on playwrds.com and Android / iOS versions as well.

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

#605

Post by kcartlidge »

I presumed most developers did, until a few years ago I asked some colleagues and not one of them said yes. Here's a handful of mine ...

- Static site generator

- Web server that delivers live-transformed Markdown

- EPUB and/or DOCX generator

- Book library management tool

- Markov-based text generator

- Hex map renderer

- Automatic Go API generator from structs

- Automatic C# API generator from Postgres database

- ORMs for Postgres in C# and Go

- C# migration tool for Postgres and MySQL

- Seneca-style microservices toolkit for C#

- Functions platform for Go

And many more ...

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

#606

Post by withinboredom »

mnorris wrote: post #604
withinboredom wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there somewhere we can purchase/play the game? I'd be interested in giving it a shot!

Thanks! It's called Wrds. There's a web app on playwrds.com and Android / iOS versions as well.

I don’t see it in the Dutch iOS App Store. You should add it there (most people speak perfect English here so you don’t need to worry about translations).

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

#608

Post by mvkel »

https://www.forgeta.com

A SMS-as-cli that reminds me of upcoming birthdays for my friends/family without me having to remember to launch an app, etc.

I'm also adding a way to add gift ideas for folks throughout the year so I'm not scrambling two weeks before to buy something.

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

#609

Post by telotortium »

7373737373 wrote: post #536
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…

* A replacement front-end for "tar" and various compressors Could you elaborate on this? I feel like this is something that could save people hours of time. I'm so incredibly sick of the various decompression flags and tools, (de)compressing something on the commandline should be as easy as it is with a GUI.

I just use dtrx: https://github.com/moonpyk/dtrx. That only does decompression, but that's generally good enough for me and supports basically everything (even more exotic stuff like Java JARs and DOCX, which are both ZIP archives under the hood).

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

#610

Post by jmartens »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #337
thwayunion wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Twilio server + interface. I'm my own service provider (thanks to Twilio) What does this mean? You run a pbx that implements twilio's apis and can be accessed via twilio's api endpoints? Or something else?

Twilio is the PBX and gateway for calls + texts. I run a server that lets me receive calls wherever I am (SIP or forwarding, as required) and send messages. Like a self-hosted Google Voice but more flexible and with a greater choice of numbers + forwarding destinations. All my server does is respond to HTTP requests from Twilio and send HTTP requests when I send a message. Somewhere in the Twilio interface, you can d…

What is your monthly twilio bill?
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