Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#71

Post by bengarney » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

I wrote a tool to do automated QA on internet video (HLS/DASH, tech used for Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, etc.).

It evaluates streams against a database of 100 or so "quirks" that identify either general issues or issues that will only manifest on certain player libraries. For instance, specific "in spec" encodings which are actually non-standard in practice get flagged.

Built on TypeScript/node/Docker over the course of maybe 18 months. Used it fairly often when I was working in the space, not at all these days. Originally the plan was to license it as an enterprise vid tool.

(I've been considering open-sourcing it - would YOU use it if so?)

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#72

Post by dirteater_ » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

I hate flashcards so I made my own app for studying Chinese after finishing HelloChinese. Very similar interface, but allows me to bring my own content.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#73

Post by Leftium » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

I made an app for my brother's wedding so all invitees could easily upload and view photos in a shared slideshow (displayed in real-time on a big TV at the event). Dismantled as soon as the event was over. It took less than a day to create with SvelteKit, Dropbox, and https://slidesome.com

Some more:

- https://weather-sense.leftium.com: weather app with the trendcast just the way I like it. WIP, but already using it on daily basis.

- https://multi-launch.leftium.com: quick link launcher; can launch multiple links at the same time. I use this multiple times a day.

- https://tt.leftium.com: tool to streamline conversions I frequently need. When the input type is detected on paste the converted value is automatically put into the clipboard. Also paste works from anywhere on the page. A super-niche hidden feature is if I paste the outerHTML of my SoFi relay accounts list, it will transform it into a TSV format for pasting into a Google sheets balance sheet. I use it a few times a month.

- https://ff.leftium.com: tool to calculate the time I needed to do something in a game I used to play. Automatically updated a calendar event with notifications.

- https://orbs.leftium.com: another tool to help with planning in the game I used to play.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#74

Post by vintagedave » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

I wrote a static site generator. It was the first "real" Python app I wrote (many files, classes, etc and actively using Python features.) The code is _terrible_ in the way that code can be when you're learning a language. You can definitely see the progress of understanding Python as you see the project develop. However, it's robust and is used to generate my site right now.

It supports Markdown plus a custom template language to convert Markdown-plus-more documents into a website, which allows me to add footnotes, sidenotes, images with specific formatting, custom markers, etc. It has specific support for parsing English and splitting sentences, so each one is in their own span in the resulting HTML. This is used for specific typographic layout.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#75

Post by arnaudsm » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

As 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.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#76

Post by abofh » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

Most of what I write is for an audience of one - even if it gets merged to the company tree, I'm usually writing for my own immediate needs. But to what you explicitly ask, I contact and I hate invoice management, so I have my own time tracker cli that integrates with stripe invoicing.

My hours get billed, I've got my notes for the cycle, and payments to my LLC get automatically routed to the right financial targets based on stuff I integrated with mercury.com.

Doesn't do the taxes, but cuts a lot of the low value/high cut vendors out of my revenue cycle and that makes me happy.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#77

Post by koeng » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

I pretty much rebuilt my bioinformatics stack from scratch in Go, and I’m pretty proud of it! It does things that no other library, even python libraries, do for synthetic biology applications.

I’m pretty sure nobody else uses it, but I use it a lot for DNA design work for my company https://github.com/koeng101/dnadesign

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#78

Post by beattheprose » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

Web service that turns a YouTube channel to a Podcast-compatible RSS feed, just by changing the URL from https://youtube.com/XYZ to https://$SERVICE_URL/XYZ.

Use it almost every day. It’s nice to keep up with channels I care about while escaping the algorithm.

Something I work on-and-off on. Could be interested in open-sourcing it fully if folks are interested in helping out. Im a pretty junior engineer, so work is slow and I’ve never been satisfied enough with the code to publish yet.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#79

Post by vintagedave » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

boricj wrote: post #64

Over the past two years I've been working on tooling that allows me to delink programs back into object files. What started out as a bunch of Jython scripts is nowadays a full-blown Ghidra extension that can export working object files from a program selection in two mouse clicks. I'm using it as part of a video game decompilation project, but it also enables a whole bunch of other use cases I've documented on my blo…

I know a linker developer, I'm going to send this to him :)

Not sure about heresy according to computer science. Sure, it's not intended, but it's a very clever thing to be able to do.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

#80

Post by onassar » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

Bookee: https://onassar.github.io/extensions/bookee/ Chrome Extension to navigate my bookmarks a bit easier (I use the keyboard shortcut 50+ times a day)