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Software for One

ajwaxman.com

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Re: Software for One

#281

Post by colenikol2 »

Loved reading your story. Personal apps are great even they have only one user - the creator itself.

But if only a handful people use the app and it stores data to a single device does the app need authorization / 2FA / login at all as these usually needs a 3rd party service or API (you need to pay for?).

So I've gone a bit different path and cut the costs to about 0$ for creating, publishing and running an app:

1. For someone that could not afford 160$/month subscriptions the alternative is to use cheap/free Chinese models through the chat (not VB code, extensions etc. that needs paid APIs). They are not so bad and generate code that is almost production ready (and free if used through their homepage AI chat).

2. Creating my apps as web apps as PWA and host on my own shared server for 2.50%/month. This set costs for deploying an app to almost 0$ (no AppStore fees, no 12 testers approval on PlayStore needed). Just upload the code and it is live. Everything else is marketing and SEO

This way I've made 50+ apps and games. They are simple but does the job, and the whole process from idea to a final product is less then a week (usually 3 days or the weekend) including basic SEO, submiting to sites like ProductHunt, social media, some basic SEO and link building.

I'm going to write a detailed post about how I'm doing it soon. Till then enjoy some of my apps and games:

https://nonconfirmed.com/miniproductivity/ https://nonconfirmed.com/app/dataset-toolset/ https://nonconfirmed.com/fisher-boy/

Re: Software for One

#282

Post by mft_ »

forsalebypwner wrote: post #267
mft_ wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can redeploy with minimal effort. Can I ask what your workflow is for this "minimal effort"? Maybe I'm missing something, as I thought it would require manual faffing with laptop, Xcode, etc. every week? (PS I've tried the two prominent sideloading approaches, but couldn't get either of them to work on my iPhone.)

AltStore, Sideloadly, SideStore all have mechanisms for automating the weekly redeploys, to name a few.

FWIW, I have tried 2/3 of those and failed to get them working satisfactorily.

Re: Software for One

#283

Post by dugmartin »

colenikol2 wrote: post #281

Loved reading your story. Personal apps are great even they have only one user - the creator itself. But if only a handful people use the app and it stores data to a single device does the app need authorization / 2FA / login at all as these usually needs a 3rd party service or API (you need to pay for?). So I've gone a bit different path and cut the costs to about 0$ for creating, publishing and running an app: 1. F…

I've been building these same personal apps but on Firebase. They have a generous free tier that includes hosting and you can add real user auth, again all for free.

Re: Software for One

#284

Post by tptacek »

eloisius wrote: post #139
eviks wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how is AI (or a human for that matter) supposed to know what “woodworking-appropriate music is”? It doesn't, but you'll believe it is because that's what you asked for. It's not like you have a solid test for what it is yourself

Guaranteed it would be unable to avoid searching for and selecting songs that specifically mention wood, woodworking, the shop, etc. It's like when you tell it to write something and give it a "vibe" or "mood" word wishing it could just give tone to the generated text, but instead it incorporates it literally.

As a person who built and uses this feature several times a week, no, it never does this. It just plays a lot of Tom Petty.

Re: Software for One

#285

Post by echion »

Diogenesian wrote: post #126

Thariq wrote "personal software was a bit early in 2020 but in 2026, it really can be as personal as a home cooked meal, or a handwritten letter." Excuse me??? Vibe-coding personal software is not a homecooked meal or a handwritten letter! It is [at best!] more akin to tastefully combining microwaved ramen with microwaved veggies and toaster oven chicken, or using ChatGPT to write a letter then editing it afterwards.…

So many people proving your point by missing it.

Re: Software for One

#286

Post by pyrale »

smokel wrote: post #186
ben_w wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is stopping us from creating an operating system that has programming as a first class citizen? Isn't that just any computer booting into a terminal?

That would be the 1980s approach. I would be more interested in being able to read an email and then say something along the lines of: in context/mail: when today/evening: if content excites me: send alert This should be available directly by pressing some code button, and there should be some kind of user interface that makes it trivial to enter these commands.

That is outlook.

There is no reason to have an os or a language dedicated to such specialized tasks.

Re: Software for One

#287

Post by TFNA »

runarberg wrote: post #229
matusfaro wrote: post #190

Oh 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…

The language-learning publishing industry is something that I happen to know well: the number of bookstores in the world that one can walk into and find a Mongolian textbook, is absolutely tiny. One is pretty much going to have to special-order to get even the popular textbooks, or just pirate from the shadow libraries.

Re: Software for One

#288

Post by runarberg »

TFNA wrote: post #287
runarberg wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The language-learning publishing industry is something that I happen to know well: the number of bookstores in the world that one can walk into and find a Mongolian textbook, is absolutely tiny. One is pretty much going to have to special-order to get even the popular textbooks, or just pirate from the shadow libraries.

I was exaggerating, but I did look at the selection at Powell’s before posting. Admittedly not your average bookstore.

Re: Software for One

#289

Post by zahlman »

s20n wrote: post #176
smokel wrote: post #171

It's somewhat unfortunate that programming is still pretty hard to start with. Early home computers would boot up with BASIC. Granted, the user experience was horrible, but at least you could start programming right away. What is stopping us from creating an operating system that has programming as a first class citizen? There is JavaScript in the browser, but that still feels as an afterthought, and incurs all kinds…

I really want to use a scheme based operating system where all processes are continuations and people boot into a REPL instead of a unix shell. something like a modern version of the symbolics lisp machines. Instead of using fork() and exec, spawning a new process would be a call/cc. can you imagine?

Is that not just Emacs?

Re: Software for One

#290

Post by kennethtiller »

rpdillon wrote: post #199
YesBox wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people want the convenience of things just working at the tap or click of a button. LLMs are not going to change that.

I was talking to my wife about this a little bit, that the promise of computers has never really been realized in the sense that we don't put power in the hands of the end user. Like one of the most obvious things that a computer can do is run a task periodically at a time to go maybe fetch information and process it. And yet, the average computer user using any commercial operating system does not understand how to…

There’s already signs of this shifting, but we need to make it easier to choose the free, open alternatives that are aligned with users (instead of extracting from users, which sometimes overlaps).

The bar for setting up automations is already lowered by having AI agents write integrations, but we need a platform where it can all come together. Apps, automation, data and integrations with an AI agent that can process it all, and present it personally customized to the user. That's the future I'm already living in - my setup has all integrations available to any automation, app, or the AI agent. And setting up new tools on top of it is mostly a non-technical task, except when I have to code the platform it's all living in ;)

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