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Software for One

ajwaxman.com

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Re: Software for One

#241

Post by whateveracct »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #120
whateveracct wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's sleep training it is insane and unnatural but it is also common fundamentally capitalist concept contact napping to beyond 1yo is deeply natural and special

Let me share an anecdote from my soviet childhood. Like most soviet children of the 80s, I was outsourced to my kindergarden each mom's workday. I abolutely loathed everything about it, but the most fascist thing to my infant mind was the post-afternoon nap. For the life of me, I just couldn't make myself fall asleep, and had to pretend, making extraordinary efforts to really look like sleeping. We were literally sca…

I guess the real thing here is society takes parents away from their children because those parents need to be used for value

Re: Software for One

#242

Post by harryf »

penandledger wrote: post #127

The examples in this thread are all personal-life software (music, calories, thermostats). What I keep wondering about is the other end: the boring business admin that self-employed people carry — invoicing, chasing late payers, expense categorisation, tax set-asides, quoting. That's "software for one" too, except the stakes are money and most people seem to limp along with a spreadsheet plus a shoebox of receipts. I…

I recently had a mind blowing experience recently building an app with Claude for someone that suffers with autism. Their basic complaint was "I can't work with most software. I think in colors". So I built them an PWA browser-based app designed specifically for the way they think, launched and updated via Github pages, with all data stored locally on their laptop.

Then I did something similar for my son, giving him a targeted job search app specific to his Gen-Z brain responds to, again launched off Github pages as a PWA, but this time with WebRTC to allow iPhone to laptop data syncing.

And along the way I realised there's probably whole host of people for whom software has never really worked. And I can built them things on a highly personalized basis that have only minimal reliance on cloud-based services.

And then I went a bit crazy and created a manifesto which I've done nothing else with https://harryf.github.io/reclaim/ ;)

Re: Software for One

#243

Post by yladiz »

fallinditch wrote: post #209
dreamcompiler wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the current state of web apps on IOS? Does Safari yet support local databases well enough to build useful web apps? Pretty much every app I can think of building for my family could just be a website iff local browser-resident persistent data was a thing. (And in some cases I wouldn't even need that if they were going to be always-online.)

I used dexie js from dexie.org to persist indexedDB, vendoring the script in a sidecar js file or inlining it - good for your iOS persistent local db, android too.

I could also recommend SQLite with OPFS, if you’re comfortable with adding a web worker. I personally find it a lot easier to reason about than IndexedDB (even with a wrapper, it’s still a bit tricky to work with, and you get the power of SQL with SQLite).

Re: Software for One

#244

Post by ymolodtsov »

LtWorf wrote: post #238
ymolodtsov wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find out what? These apps are as protected as they could be. Always could be a zero-day or a package vulnerability but that's the same for everyone.

Every single person with no experience thinks that.

Your replies so far haven't been useful.

Re: Software for One

#245

Post by zh3 »

yen223 wrote: post #131

I joked a while back that it was faster to vibe-code a white noise generator than to download a white-noise app. I've since tested that theory on the Google Play Store (iOS has one built in), and it was depressingly true. The slow part was trying to find an app that didn't waste your time with ads.

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp

Re: Software for One

#246

Post by storus »

callc wrote: post #230
erelong wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe we need more like raspberry pi smartphone-sized tablets projects so people can sideload whatever they want like like "RasPad" (or other devices like the Pinephone)

s/sideload/install/g Sideloading implies a subversive action, which we should not be primed to think.

Sideloading also means installing an app you don't want to publish on any marketplace (for your own or family/friends use). Is there a better word for it?

Re: Software for One

#247

Post by xixixao »

I built myself a package tracking web app. Only cost is LLM sub (Cursor at like $20/m). OpenAI API is free (sharing data). Rest is tailwind+shadcn+Convex - Convex’s free tier is plenty, and it gives me a db and hosting as well now.

Re: Software for One

#248

Post by rpdillon »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #222
monsieurbanana wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user can and already does that. If they want to regularly fetch their emails and process them, they will install outlook or use the Gmail web app. If they want to regularly fetch and install updates for their games they will install steam. The "run a task periodically" isn't the difficult part, it's processing the data that is. And to be honest I don't think llms will empower that many people, the vast ma…

Those are just built in functions in the apps. I think we are more talking about custom automations like ”I want you to download the images on this site everyday and put them in this folder and send me a message on telegram with any new photos” or ”I wanna check this website for searches for X and when a match then message me”. An example I have seen is non-tech people before logging in to a saas app and manually cop…

Exactly. The users of e.g. autohotkey are in a vanishing minority. It's the kind of stuff I'd like to see advertised more in the OS, as though a product manager had on OKR to move that metric. Apps like Apple Music that emphasize consumption (and subscription revenue) get that treatment, but empowering apps that teach automation do not, since there's no (short term) business there.

Re: Software for One

#249

Post by eloisius »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #212
nonameiguess wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel on the opposite side of a divide when I see these kinds of comments here about people creating bespoke software to address deficiencies they perceive in their daily lives. There's an engineer mindset that tools can solve any and every problem, but do they? Are you quantifiably any fitter than you were before? Better bloodwork, BMI, body fat percentage, anything? Are you creating better wooden goods? More woode…

You've climbed a certain mountain, and you're strolling around the summit on flat ground. You're looking down on the people at the bottom or middle of the mountain, struggling up hill to reach the peak, and wondering "why are they going through all this effort? Why don't they just stroll around on flat ground like I am?". They're still building the systems that you already have in place. It's far easier to use a syst…

> They're still building the systems that you already have in place.

Bull. They're doing highly sophisticated procrastination. I'll never become a great photographer by vibe coding the perfect tool for my workflow that selects, ranks and edits the 100 photos I took this week, or one that tells me where to stand and when to click the shutter. I have to be out shooting thousands of photos every week and laboring over the editing myself. You get good at what you do, and if you're spending your time making these one-off disposable apps instead of doing the thing they ostensibly support, a few years from now that's what you're going to be better at.

Re: Software for One

#250

Post by razyoudude »

With the same mindset i've build screenshot tool to replace shottr and paid license to cleanshot x, added missing features that I wanted to have for years (doing bunch of screenshots and videos daily)

and i love this tool

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