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Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
481–490 of 671 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#482After a quick burst of manic energy during exam phase, I decided to solve the pigeon problem on my balcony once and for all (and in a humane way). So I bought a cheap electric water gun from Amazon, built in WiFi using an ESP8266 and a relay shield; 3D printed a window mount for my old iPhone (running a webcam app) and hacked together some openCV code in python. After all this was working on my desk, I had the pleasu…
Can you publish more details of your setup and the code?
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#483Yup millions. Almost a new one every day....
Most are just one-off utilities to solve a problem. Some people would do them in bash, or python, or PowerShell. I do them in C#, because I know it well, and can code it without thinking...
A Few 'Big' programs I've written are:
- Custom SMTP server to proxy in front of an Exchange Server - ran 24/7 for over a decade until last year when I migrated to Exchange Online.
- Gopher Client for Windows which people actually use! [1]
- A application launcher/dock thing that sits at the top of my screen with drop down menus for apps sorted into categories, because I cannot stand the windows Start menu.
- A similarly useful transparent current-month calendar that sits in the bottom right of my screen at all times, which saves me having to click on the clock to find out what date 'next Wednesday' is etc.
- An RSS reader in PHP that I use multiple times a day. It's different to most others in that it only shows the current items in the live RSS feed for a site - it has no history. I prefer that, so I don't get anxiety with unread items.
A nice recent one that's only been in constant use for a few months is a Python script that dumps all the data from my weather station and logs it into a MariaDB table. I'm not doing anything with the data just yet, just collecting it. Once I have enough back history to play with, I'll write a web app to display it all nicely.
I could go on and on.... my 'Source Code' folder is massive, full of useful stuff, and half-written ideas.
Oh, and I'm actually not a programmer by trade,
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[1] http://www.jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-wind...
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#484I created a cronjon that automatically signs me up for gym classes.
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#485A few ones, mostly scripts, a few personal webpages with a blogging platform, webscrappers and plugins for language learning in Anki, and a chatbot. For sure more software as part of software development which would be more likely "for work" than "for myself".
However very few of those pass the test of time, as it is hard and costly to maintain the quality of a comercial product which has invested the time in usability etc.
Software is a lot of work, but getting started is fun and people can achieve a lot within the few hours. The last touches is where the real greatest effort has to be brought in.
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#486When I moved into my current house the VDSL (FTTC) cabinet that serves my road was full, so I could only get DSL.
I wrote a script that checked the OpenReach availability API every few minutes so that when someone ceased their service (because they were moving homes) I would be sent a link to upgrade my service. I think it took about 2 weeks.
I did the same for the second-chance London 2012 tickets.
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#487I'd be surprised if there existed a significant number of software development professionals who could answer a flat 'no' to this (although I'm certain there exist some amount who only do it when it is more direct a solution than anything else, and not for its own sake).
Most of the code I write for personal use is for one-shot scrapers or "query this database and fiddle with that information to give me something interesting"--the only things larger in scale than that which I continue to work on are a Discord bot and... well, I had been working on a Slay the Spire mod and it's been rotting for quite a while.
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#488Yes, I tend to write small programs like that all the time, it's one of the reasons I like computers, to write programs to do things.
A few I remember: The FinalKey, hardware device that acts like a keyboard, is a password manager.
OSGG, a lander game I actually want to play.
Chromogen, a bash script that generates lovely static image albums.
"sovs" at work, which fetches a fresh source tree because our procedure requires calling multiple programs with multiple parameters.
Lots of one-off things to fetch something out of some file or do some task on a set of files, for example, I made a utility that let me batch cut video files by giving a list of start-end times.
My memory fails me, and I think it means I should probably be better at keeping those utilities around and organized..
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#489Earlier 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?
I think the generator from xkcd sounds pretty good. https://xkcd.com/936/
For ages I remembered this as 'battery-horse-staple-correct' but then I see loads of people saying 'correct-battery-horse-staple' so now I think I'm the one who is wrong.
I wonder which way round is actually the right way to say it?
Re: Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?
#490Yes, besides the many scripts I built a visual basic program back in 2000 to make packages of photos and text for my travel blog (before blogging was a thing)
This way I could prepare all the content of my laptop and then upload one zip file in an internet café and have it all published. Internet was still scarce back then. It worked very well.