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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?

#611

Post by jmartens »

inetknght wrote: post #202
brk wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add another Comcast outage checker and logger to the pile. Used to call and hassle them for outage refunds regularly.

Chalk me up to that too. And my brother. Originally I'd used Ping Plotter. When I went 100% Linux I stopped using that. My brother ended up putting together a Grafana board tied to influxdb & infping and monitors several friend and family internet connections complete with alerts. Here [0] is a screenshot of the Comcast cable connection from a year and a half ago. I have since switched to AT&T gigabit fiber. Here [1]…

I love that you are crowdsourcing data from several friends and family members. We need this for most of the SaaS world!

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

#612

Post by Ruthalas »

danbmil99 wrote: post #452
tharkun__ wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is it. Repetition. You could threaten to kill me and I wouldn't be able to user ffmpeg from memory. I just don't have to use it often enough. So I created a script w/ the settings I usually want to encode certain things that I need to encode semi-often. It definitely doesn't make it easier to remember ffmpeg command line options because I don't have to use them. kubectl and our home grown command line to…

I thought everyone just searches for their exact needed pattern on SO

I just keep a "cook book" of common commands I've gathered from SO so I don't need to search each time to refresh my memory.

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

#613

Post by xcubic »

flobosg wrote: post #143

To name a few: * A script that emails me every day a list of new articles published by a selection of academic journals. Using an RSS reader for this turned out to be too messy. * A script that generates Spotify playlists based on my liked songs, optionally according to some criteria. The playlists can be sorted according to specific song features (higher to lower energy, for example). * A zettelkasten engine, includ…

Did you share 2?

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

#615

Post by kkfx »

Much depend on what you call "program", in "scripting" terms I've written very many, countless, most buggy limited wrapper but very useful time-savers, an example (witch was derived by many others similar, I can't remember them all, this is my version) http://ix.io/3Vbk like this I have around 20+ in use, some written years ago and left almost untouched, some evolved. In "config-as-programs" terms my Emacs config, witch is actually an elisp program is around 4800 lines, my NixOS config, witch is in Nix language, so another program, is a bit more than 1500 SLoC etc. If you means large WebApps, GUIs etc no, I've write some small GUIs and very few WebUIs for some relatives/friends but not for my own personal use...

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

#616

Post by WesleyJohnson »

mkl wrote: post #525
WesleyJohnson wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could shift my thinking to do this. I've been a web developer for 17 years and love programming. But any time I've tried to build my own projects or products, it's usually a revamp of an existing product or game, and I quickly lose interest. I lack the ability to see everyday "issues" that could be resolved with programming. But if someone asks me to solve an issue with a program, I could probably come up wi…

If you don't need/want it yourself, and no one's paying you to do it, yes, you'll lose interest. I don't have your problem; I reach for code as a solution pretty quickly. Probably key is I'm not trying to "finish" personal projects or make a product, just doing as much as I need at the time. Since you know web development, maybe install TamperMonkey and start "fixing" or improving websites you use regularly. You can…

Thanks for the suggestion on TamperMonkey, I'll check it out.

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

#617

Post by WesleyJohnson »

gotaquestion wrote: post #394
WesleyJohnson wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could shift my thinking to do this. I've been a web developer for 17 years and love programming. But any time I've tried to build my own projects or products, it's usually a revamp of an existing product or game, and I quickly lose interest. I lack the ability to see everyday "issues" that could be resolved with programming. But if someone asks me to solve an issue with a program, I could probably come up wi…

I didn't say everything was finished. ;-) In fact, I'm not sure how to decide if something actually IS finished. Sometimes I just want to understand something, and when I get to that point, I call it done. I just like to learn. Like with my FM synths: I made a TX802 clone a long time ago (in software), and once I got to a certain point I was like, "Yep, got it." I just wanted to construct something that could impleme…

That's not a bad outlook and I had never thought of it that way. Even if I don't finish the project, at least I'm actively coding and having fun. Thanks!

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

#618

Post by tharkun__ »

Ruthalas wrote: post #612
danbmil99 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought everyone just searches for their exact needed pattern on SO

I just keep a "cook book" of common commands I've gathered from SO so I don't need to search each time to refresh my memory.

I'm pretty sure you meant this in a different way but it reminded me of another thing I see a lot with people.

They have these huge lists (written down in some tool or another) of commands to do specific things and they copy and paste them. It's heart wrenching to see them search for these sometimes (even if they find them) and then they copy and paste them. But they sometimes (many times) don't work or are super simple things. Like the `kubectl get pod` thing I mentioned, they might have that in one of those lists under some heading like "dev environment commands" or somesuch together with 10 or 15 others.

Because they never actually tried to understand the simple logic and meaning behind these command line tools and only ever copy and pasted, they get very easily tripped up by even the simplest things, such as replacing the parts that need to be adjusted for their specific situation, even if clearly marked, such as `kubectl -n get pod` (or one that comes up even more often in troubleshooting sessions 'The command from the docs does not work and I made sure I copy and paste so I don't mistype it' and if you ask what they did it was `kubectl -n examplenamespace get pod`). Or they might have written down a command from the onboarding docs that combined multiple things into one command line. To fix issues with their environment, they have to basically nuke everything and start from scratch, because only then will their copy and pasted command actually work. They haven't learned to decompose these and use the parts individually or recompose them.

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

#620

Post by manifoldgeo »

I created a web app for doing personal accounting with GnuCash files [1]. The mobile app for GnuCash was abandoned around 2018 from what I can tell, and it never had synchronization, so you couldn't easily use it on both mobile and desktop at the same time.

I'm one of only two users as far as I know. It's in a public repository, but I doubt anyone has used it. Personally, I use it nearly every day, and it has enough features that I rarely have to use GnuCash anymore.

The app isn't the most beautiful thing in the world, but it works just well enough to be usable.

References

[1] https://github.com/bxbrenden/gnucash-helper

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