> Update, February 2022: Two years later, my family still uses BoopSnoop every day. I have added one (1) feature, at my mother’s request.
What is that one feature I wonder? Robin, you around to answer?
An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
131–140 of 296 posts
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#132[deleted]
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#133I love writing bespoke software! My little bonus Christmas gift to my parents this year was a kind of Jeopardy clone that uses a dataset of questions from thousands of shows. Watching Jeopardy is a new nightly tradition, but they always complained that they wish they could see the category when the clue is on screen, which is what inspired the project. It’s a full screen PWA and my mom likes to mirror her phone scree…
A lot of the time, the hardest part for these things is finding the dataset (and the hardest part of personal projects in general). How did you curate yours?
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#134I maintain a whole set of services for my family I either implemented myself completely or glued from other sources.
We have our own no nonsense chat desktop, web and mobile apps for ios and android. Our own calendar for family events as well as to coordinate daily operations. Our own forum. Our own pages with resources and even our own documentation bot that you can ask pretty ambiguous questions and it can point you to the past posts/documents/chat threads that are relevant (when you don't remember where it was mentioned but you can describe what you are looking for).
Even a wall mounted ipad with couple tools that we find useful. Shopping list where you can add stuff for the next shopping run. Voting for meals. Calendar which is especially useful to kids because they can book our time when they need something or they can see when I plan to do my training sessions or when I am or I am not available (I work remotely and don't have set day plan).
Recently started spending time with my eldest son to add more features -- any way to get kids hooked up to programming is a win IMO.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#135Is this iPhone? How did you distribute said app?
I had the same question. He says TestFlight, but he's handwaving some of the headaches of that. TF builds expire every 90 days. The other option would be an adhoc certificate, but then you have to collect everyone's apple id. Apple makes this kind of app distribution process more painful than it needs to be.
It should hopefully be easier in the future when side loading is possible on iOS.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#136This post significantly influenced me back when it was first on HN, and helped me articulate what I was already doing subconsciously. I started a homelab years ago like a lot of folks here, and slowly that’s changed to being a hobby of building and selfhosting applications for my “users” of 5-15 of my family and closest friends. I’ve written so many little apps for them (e.g movie night scheduler) and integrations in…
I love writing little tools - but I tend to do so for others, than myself.
My GF and her Sister kept a running tab (Beans) between them - and always were having issues reconciling who owes what for when etc...
These are smart and capable women, but for some reason their personal tab between eachother was a headache - so an "app" I made was just a smarter spreadsheet in google docs they share and they enter their info each month and it tallies who owes what.
I forgot about it for over a year or so - and so I asked my GF is they were still using it
"We use it all the time - its been such a lifesaver."
Its literally just how one would use any spreadsheet... these are high-paid, highly successful people, and were struggling to just get a 'tab' thing going.
One of the things I did, was have it load pics of their shared dog on each new tab (a tab per month) and they loved that.
Silly, stupid, took me 15 minutes and they have been using it for the last couple of years and love it.
But yeah - build little tools for a small circle.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#137Do you still need to pay Apple's extortionate $99/year developer fee if you're only developing apps for private/personal use?
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like it. I of course was running through all kinds of scraping scenarios… which is why you got the app done and I didn’t,
Just to let you know, that wasn't the original commentor, so it could stil involve scrpaing (which is what I expected, too).
I would guess using Google's Places API. They have busy time reports and hours that are most likely updated by the business owner. No scraping needed
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#139> I know I ought to pay it forward and publish the code for my app. Even if it doesn’t work for anyone else as-is, it might provide a helpful guide — one I would have been grateful to have. But the code is marbled with application-specific values, well-salted with authentication keys.
Meh. Pretty disappointing excuse. Wouldn't take long at all to separate secrets and would make the app inherently more secure anyway.
Re: An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)
#140Do you still need to pay Apple's extortionate $99/year developer fee if you're only developing apps for private/personal use?
Yes.
And it's explicitly not allowed to publish in the app store for such a small audience.