Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#241

Post by ajb » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:48 AM UTC

I devised a grammar for arithmetic expressions which is less readable than either standard or RPN notation.

Basically, an arithmetic expression is a tree. Standard notation indicates the shape of the tree with brackets, RPN by listing the nodes in the order of a particular tree walk. My notation visually indicates whether each node is connected on the right or left. Examples:

Standard: 1+2

RPN: 1 2 +

Tree: 1'+`2

Standard: 1*(2+3)

RPN: 1 2 3 + *

Tree: 1'*2'`+`3

It looks a bit nicer if ' and ` are mirror images in the font you are using, but it's still not very readable. I did hope that you could leave the tags off leaves and only put them on operators, but this isn't sufficient to make each tree shape unique.

The idea was just to find something visually interesting*

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#242

Post by tetris11 » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:48 AM UTC

Netcob wrote: post #231

I didn't expect it to be that useless. I like to experiment with home automation things, and recently I added a feature to my system where I could push notifications with images to my phone (pretty much everything I do is entirely self-hosted btw). Then a Valetudo update came out - Valetudo is a FOSS replacement for the cloud services usually required for supported robot vacuums. You root your robot, block it from ph…

I love this. I'm in a somewhat home automation tinker place myself, and have made an open source doorbell camera (kinda) using an esp32 chip, since I didn't trust anything else to not spy. It sends me messages over element of any movement lasting longer than 5 seconds, which usually involves an old lady who walks slowly with her zimmer frame across the front of the house. Other than actual doorbell use, most of the images are of this old woman who I've now taken up the habit of greeting if I see her somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#243

Post by protocolture » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:50 AM UTC

tholman wrote: post #81

I love a good useless program, I may have written more useless ones than useful. Here's a few of my faves from the last 10 years! - A password strength page that insults you based on strength https://trypap.com/ - Minesweeper with 1 square https://onesquareminesweeper.com/ - Adding elevator music to "go to top" buttons https://tholman.com/elevator.js/ - CSS Animation library of obnoxious over the top animations https…

99% sure i bought a website template years ago with elevator.js

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#244

Post by refactorerer » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:51 AM UTC

I made a todo app in a mixed up tech stack (nextjs Backend, Go Frontend, Postgres in the browser): https://github.com/refactorerer/least-toxic-todo-2024

I was probably furious about web development again, so I thought maybe it's fun to do something completely crappy and broken by design on purpose.

It was really fun to do, but I also wanted to challenge myself in writing about it. I do not think that this satire project/article did a lot to improve my writing, but hey at least I did it and finished it. I do think however that it could have become much funnier had I put a little more effort into it. Also tried to get it out there by making an X account and engage with the htmx guy, but I learned that my X game is too weak and I gave it up afterwards.

I definitely want to do some project like this again, I like the idea of doing something useless and/or plain wrong.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#245

Post by protocolture » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:53 AM UTC

Years ago we were exporting all of our company mailboxes for compliance reasons.

Now, exchange wasnt dumb on this front, it wont run too many jobs and it wont throttle resources. However my manager was the most risk averse person on the planet. Despite demonstrating this, and locating documentation he still wanted assurance.

So I wrote a powershell script, that makes sure to load only 4 export requests at a time, logging failures and checking exports land in the correct directory. Basically nannying a process that is already suitably nannied.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#246

Post by hi_hi » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:55 AM UTC

jinay wrote: post #96

When I was first learning computer vision, I wrote a program that could tell the time from an image of a clock [1]. I had no purpose for it besides the fact that it seemed like a cool problem to try and solve. Years later, I get an email from a stranger in Korea, asking me how to run my program. Why would he want to use my silly program? Turns out you can adapt the code to read analog pressure gauges which is really…

Out of interest, how does this account for the orientation of the clock? Is it assuming 12 is always at the top, or is there some way it would work if the photo was somewhat rotated?

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#247

Post by wmanley » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:57 AM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #240

Netcob wrote: post #231

I didn't expect it to be that useless. I like to experiment with home automation things, and recently I added a feature to my system where I could push notifications with images to my phone (pretty much everything I do is entirely self-hosted btw). Then a Valetudo update came out - Valetudo is a FOSS replacement for the cloud services usually required for supported robot vacuums. You root your robot, block it from ph…

Could you use this to build your own “poop detector” where an object is routed around until you confirm with the robot if it’s “safe” to proceed in that area? I love my robot vacuum but I dare never run it when I’m not at home for fear or smearing poop all over my floor on accident. Sadly I didn’t shell out enough money for a bot with superior object detection.

Maybe just stop shitting on the carpet.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#248

Post by dspillett » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 9:57 AM UTC

ajxs wrote: post #76

A long time ago I wrote a useless, but fun program that attempts to programmatically recreate a source image by randomly placing randomly sized, randomly coloured rectangles onto a canvas. If the result of this random application of colour is closer to the source image, it's kept, otherwise the changes are discarded. Over time, it gets reasonably close to the source image. https://ajxs.github.io/pbp/

I've seen a similar thing used to generate low-size versions of images using arbitrary SVG primitives (large triangles or circles rather than small blocks), for use as placeholders while high-res images load. I can't find any of them in quick search, but there were a couple of F/OSS tools that implemented the trick.

UPD: found one of them, https://axe312ger.github.io/sqip/ (look at the “SQIP primitive art” column in that page's examples table)

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#249

Post by hi_hi » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 10:01 AM UTC

refactorerer wrote: post #244

I made a todo app in a mixed up tech stack (nextjs Backend, Go Frontend, Postgres in the browser): https://github.com/refactorerer/least-toxic-todo-2024 I was probably furious about web development again, so I thought maybe it's fun to do something completely crappy and broken by design on purpose. It was really fun to do, but I also wanted to challenge myself in writing about it. I do not think that this satire proj…

Bravo! I love the principle you approached this with, and would like to see more examples of these anti best practice projects that still work (all-be-it in a limited context). Tech should be fun, and as my old man use to say "there is more than one way to skin a cat". Keep it up.

Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

#250

Post by CRConrad » Wed, Oct 23, 2024, 10:01 AM UTC

JoachimS wrote: post #191

The weirdest, though personally very useful program I've written was the 'Renklämma reheater' program I wrote as a student. For those that don't know a Renklämma is basically a folded piece of soft flat bread with raindeer meat inside. (Ren is Swedish for raindeer, and 'klämma' is something folded over and squeezed together - very logical.) For an image on what a Renklämma looks like, see (and yes, the official name…

Someone should probably insert the obligatory XKCD "Emacs keystroke as space-heater" link, but I'm too lazy to go look for it. [Edit: Oh look, someone did. Of course!]

(BTW, whaddayamean "the official name is not 'Renklämma'"? I never heard them called anything else. If the alternative is "Polarklämma", there's nothing "official" about that AFAICS; it's just one manufacturer's product name.)