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Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#161

Post by tiltowait »

clbrmbr wrote: post #149
ragnese wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but I recently looked in to playing MtG again because my son expressed interest. But, I was a bit taken aback by how different the environment is. I last played when they still had numbered "base sets", e.g., "9th Edition", and then rotating "blocks" of three smaller-but-more-advanced sets. I was assuming I would go in and buy a couple of starter decks from the most recent numbered "edition" to start teach…

I’ve been playing with my son, but using my shoebox full of old cards, many with an “IV” logo so must have been around 4e that I was playing back in the day. The game is complex, but a good intellectual challenge for a bright 6yo reader.

Probably VI; 4th edition didn't have a set symbol.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#162

Post by sage76 »

I am writing a solution manual to this textbook, by solving EVERY DAMN exercise and writing it up in latex.

It is EXTREMELY time consuming.

The actual solution manual is already available online.

I might gain an understanding of this field, but I doubt I will ever get an interesting job because of this effort.

Unless I revise this stuff, I will forget most of it in a few years.

Why am I doing this? Idk. Vanity perhaps?

Somebody stop me....

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#163

Post by mandmandam »

windowshopping wrote: post #90

I built the best site out there for playing magic the gathering online. It's way better than any other available option. I've never shared it with the magic community because I think wizards of the coast would just send me a cease and desist, so three years of work is just sitting idle. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

There's probably someone out there with a great card game that is just lacking a site...

Could you adapt the thing to suit another card game?

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#164

Post by jokethrowaway »

clbrmbr wrote: post #141

After the first lecture of my first programming course in college, I went to the Professor Tewksbury and started to tell him about a simulator I was writing to help other students check their work. He holds up his hand to stop me speaking, says “you have an A. Don’t come to class anymore.” So, I never went to class or did any of the assigned work, instead working on the simulator in my dormroom. At the end of the ter…

It was obviously a joke you didn't get

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#165

Post by whstl »

89vision wrote: post #147
LaserDiscMan wrote: post #124

I once worked on an in-house ERP system which had been developed over about 15 years by various developers. It was the engine of the entire company, everything passed through it. The CFO and some senior leadership erroneously blamed it for their shortcomings/used it as a scapegoat. When new management took charge, an initiative was started to replace the system with an industry standard solution. Both myself and the…

> the vendor gleefully assured us that they were experienced with "migrations of this scale" Sales is mostly just lying to collect a commission check.

Quite the opposite, they are experienced with those endless migrations.

French poet Paul Valery once said: "A poem is never finished, only abandoned".

It is the same for those projects. You just gotta keep paying forever.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#167

Post by windowshopping »

sph wrote: post #113
windowshopping wrote: post #90

I built the best site out there for playing magic the gathering online. It's way better than any other available option. I've never shared it with the magic community because I think wizards of the coast would just send me a cease and desist, so three years of work is just sitting idle. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

Go out with a bang. Release it, enjoy your 15 minutes in the spotlight, and when the lawyers come a-knocking, shut it down. Or make it open source and let the community take the wheel and the responsibility. You never know what opportunities this adventure might bring, but certainly more than just keeping it on your hard drive. Go for it mate.

I may indeed do this. There is an outstanding issue I have to address that I've never quite worked up the motivation to deal with:

Heroku restarts their servers once every 24 hours with only thirty seconds' warning. Since the games are in-memory, this of course kicks everyone out of whatever games they may be in the middle of.

I guess the solution is to have the games be on Redis instead of in-memory? I'm a bit more front-end oriented so I was bewildered to learn this was how it worked in the first place and I'm not 100% confident in my solution.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#168

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

psnehanshu wrote: post #95

Worked for a client via freelancing. Built 3 projects, all failed. He likes to follow the trends, first SaaS, then crypto/blockchain, and now AI. He apparently raises money, pays himself and builds bullshit projects. That's it. But while doing so, he does everything to look like a legit startup. Ngl, he was my first major client with whom I gained a lot of experience, but it doesn't change the fact that he is a hype…

Being a parasite is a very effective survival strategy.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#169

Post by datascienced »

ttymck wrote: post #151
clbrmbr wrote: post #141

After the first lecture of my first programming course in college, I went to the Professor Tewksbury and started to tell him about a simulator I was writing to help other students check their work. He holds up his hand to stop me speaking, says “you have an A. Don’t come to class anymore.” So, I never went to class or did any of the assigned work, instead working on the simulator in my dormroom. At the end of the ter…

Awesome story, and a good lesson in "always get it in writing"

The concept seems weird to me. I have never been given a mark by a teacher that matters. Exams were administered by independent bodies.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#170

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

windowshopping wrote: post #90

I built the best site out there for playing magic the gathering online. It's way better than any other available option. I've never shared it with the magic community because I think wizards of the coast would just send me a cease and desist, so three years of work is just sitting idle. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

OK listen up dude.

> I built the best site out there for playing magic the gathering online.

No you didn't! You built the best site out there for playing trading card games. It just so happens that it's very easy to point to your own local card/rule sets, share them with peers, and play together online. And if the cards/rules being used by the clients happen to be MTG cards/rules, oh well! That's out of your hands.

Seriously, if you want to release this you only need to make it a) generic out of the box, and b) completely customizable at the client level. Of course this would never support true competitive play since you can never trust the client, but it would still be super fun for playing against people you trust. And as a bonus you could support user-created cards and rules.

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