I've built a lot of software like this over the past year. It's always kind of there but not quite and over time feels dirty. I don't think I'm still using any of it.
Software for One
251–260 of 301 posts
Re: Software for One
#252Things I've built in the last month or so: * A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". * A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite. * A macOS menu…
As a new father, just using so many apps sounds exhausting, let alone building and maintaining them. I would have been very excited about these maybe 10-15 years ago. Now I just want the ability to do things with my phone when my hands are tied up holding the baby.
> maintaining them
In the agentic era, there is no need for maintenance - each artifact is immutable and just-in-time. In case you need a new version, spin up a new artifact.
I’m only half-joking.
Re: Software for One
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> except for fiber, which I don't care enough about to track.
I can't recommend enough that you go build your own tracker that graphs your fiber intake, shows trends, and alerts if you're under threshold. It's not hard! I do that for protein, and it's been very valuable.
It's too easy just to drink the glass of pysllium husk and not obsess over data entry and trend analysis. You may even learn that your poops are the alerts.
Re: Software for One
#254I 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.
I mean white noise generators are literally less then 20 lines of JavaScript. I wrote one (without an LLM) just now in less then 10 minutes:
const audioCtx = new AudioContext();
const sr = audioCtx.sampleRate;
const buffer = audioCtx.createBuffer(2, 2 * sr, sr);
for (let channel = 0; channel {
source.start();
});
document.body.append(button);Re: Software for One
#255I've written about that, and the rest of that spectrum of apps, here:
https://blog.moralestapia.com/posts/application-paradigms-en...
Re: Software for One
#256[dead]
Re: Software for One
#257Things I've built in the last month or so: * A personal music player for Apple Music with an embedded agent loop, so I can say things like "I'm going to work in the wood shop, play woodworking-appropriate music and keep the playlist full and non-repeating indefinitely". * A calorie/protein tracker that takes 1-liner summaries of meals, resolves them to macros with GPT5 calls, and tracks them in SQLite. * A macOS menu…
@tptacek (and others who have their house full of sensors and toys), check out https://httpstate.com.
Your feedback as a builder is greatly appreciated :).
Re: Software for One
#258Oh my this is so true: * I waited for Duolingo to support Mongolian for years, and in one evening, created my own DuoMongo https://github.com/matusfaro/DuoMongo * I wanted an LLM to mock up a server to speak arbitrary network protocols across any layer (e.g. http/tcp/bgp/snmp/arp) for protocol development/testing/cybersecurity and I got it: https://smotanacom.github.io/netget/ * I wanted a way to inspect/route LLM ca…
Did you want to learn Mongolian or did you want to play a video game where you pretended to learn Mongolian. Because if it was the former, plenty of resources have been available for you for years. You could have walked into your local bookstore and bought a textbook, hired a tutor on italki, downloaded an anki deck, listened to MNB broadcasts etc. etc. I think LLMs are pretty similar to DuoLingo. It is a tool that m…
My anecdata is that both Duolingo and LLMs are useful in learning. Yes, you have to put in the work.
Seeing the usual HN hate on Duolingo specifically, I wonder whether it's blind. I might have missed scientific research about it causing cancer.
Re: Software for One
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a new father, just using so many apps sounds exhausting, let alone building and maintaining them. I would have been very excited about these maybe 10-15 years ago. Now I just want the ability to do things with my phone when my hands are tied up holding the baby.
As a father of two young children, LLMs have been kind of amazing. I’ve historically been someone who has project ideas and has fun building them. But for a few years now I just haven’t had the headspace for it — all I’ve wanted to do in the evening is relax for a bit. In the past month I’ve completed a home dashboard idea I’ve had for years, I’ve built a house management system, a travel planning tool, a guitar chor…
I’m building a video game for our abernic device with my son (no game engine experience, just vibing the game engine ourselves). We’re having a blast. We play up to our progress right before bedtime stories.
The other day I refused to fire it up for him and he had a full meltdown. I told my wife I had never seen product market fit like that before.
It is a little harder with something like a game to maintain motivation and go for perfection when you know your audience is an audience of one but it’s also a relief to just worry about the things he cares about (trains and firetrucks).
I also miss there being something intellectually challenging to a side project but that probably means I just need to learn a real game engine after this.
Re: Software for One
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
I think the whole point of OPs post is that they didn't spend a bunch of time coding the apps, since a LLM did it for them with a fairly simple prompt.
> I have to be out shooting thousands of photos every week and laboring over the editing
Why? Ansel adams would only shoot 20 photos a week on average. Why are you procrastinating by spending so much time with the camera instead of just having naturally good taste like him?