70% of what I do at work
Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
301–310 of 794 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#302I pretty regularly produce documents which are required by process but no longer have a consumer. I make them because I get yelled at if I dont, but the 'product' I output is basically useless - including for the original use (which has been replaced by another similar, yet different document).
I've also implemented hours of design work for a feature the customer later decided they didnt want.
Oh well, I get paid the same anyhow.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#303Spent the last 1-2 years building a survey tool for a campus in-house using a CMS. Did so using CI pipelines which aren't trendy at my campus.
2 quarters (4 months) from release campus decides to buy an Internet SaaS product. And the in-house project was shelved completely never to be touched now.
Imma really the integration lead for the campus with the SaaS vendor. But it turns out the SaaS product cannot create the Reports we want, nor is it granular enough in other aspects for our needs compared to our in-house legacy offering.
Se la vi.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#304I 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…
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#305I made a browser extension that allows scripting short webpage interaction scenarios[0] using a custom DSL. The DSL allows to point to elements using on-screen labels, similarly to trydactil, pentadactyl and such. The DSL actions are essentially functions that accept arguments, for example one can describe something like "enter 'foo' in google search field and press the button" with a script line similar to: "|'foo'a c", where 'a' and 'c' correspond to labels on the screen.
These scenario descriptions can then be bound to hotkeys.
I decided to embed a LISP into the extension, but while building the interpreter[1] I realized that the DSL is already too complex for everyday use, and I haven't really used it to automate anything.
I am the only user of this addon.
[0] https://github.com/axes-webext/axes [1] https://gitlab.com/kiniro/
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have worked on earning money to live in your world. Good job. Don't over think work.
This is the right attitude. Unless you own the business, you have no moral responsibility to ensure the projects you work on have a purpose. You can, of course, optionally choose to not work on projects you believe have a bad or evil purpose. I've quit jobs where I though the project was evil. You're writing the code, or producing the documentation, managing the project, performing QA, or whatever else your role is,…
This. I sit down the hall from the CEO of our company. I hear nearly every meeting and conversation that goes on. Don't think for a minute that most CEOs aren't scrounging money from useless bullshit circumstances half the time. They are very pragmatic and just really don't give a fuck where the money comes from.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
That reminds me of a story about a friend of mine from high school. In fourth form (age 14) he did every exercise in our maths textbook and sent the author a list of corrections to the printed answers. I don't think this was very well received by the author. That friend went on to miss 7th form year, got preferential entry into a maths degree, and had his degree by the time I finished year 1.
Just curious, do you remember the name of the book and how big it was in terms of content and exercises?
It was big. Compared to textbooks today it was probably very good. Hardcover and probably 500 pages. This was 1984, in New Zealand, but I think the textbook was British.
I tried to help my daughter with some maths a few months ago and I couldn't believe how bad her textbook was. It didn't appear to explain anything, just used exercises to show results.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#308Woof AlertTM converts dog barks to email. https://github.com/FoxDotBuild/woof-alert
Nice. How does it send the mail? Do you need a local mailserver running?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#309Regarding OP's story, deprecated is just another word for "stable".
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#310I'm dead serious here, but if you are working on something useless do anything in your power to change that. Never work on something that's for sure going to be useless. Sometimes things become useless later, or don't pan out, and that's fine. But you're dead in the water if you aren't in a position to avoid working on something you know is useless. In fact you really shouldn't be working on something that isn't the MOST useful thing you could be doing.