21–30 of 30 posts
I can see a future where a lot of SaaS gets pushed down to APIs or low level “pipes” and we’re all just speaking / typing requests into a machine that creates what we need just in time. Software kind of unfurling in front of our feet as we walk in our desired direction.
Working in software professionally, the internal struggle I seem to have is separating "personal software" from "resume fodder." The line of thinking is generally: "Why create this one-off thing for myself when I can publicize it, get some contributors, and add it to my list of successful OSS projects." It's a terrible loop, to be honest.
I've been struggling with some sort of variant of this. I'm a prolific FOSS contributor, but a few years ago I switched to a very time-intensive day job and we had our first kid, and my FOSS contributions have waned a fair bit as a result. I still need to do tech stuff outside work to have an extra creative hobby outlet, so I've been doing HW/SW DIY projects like [1] and [2] that don't put me into the critical path o…
If we had simply followed the Unix philosophy to its full potential, we would have a lot more “personal” software that people could create for whatever niche purpose they need.
I wrote a notes app in react native just for myself a few years ago (out of frustration after changing notes apps every year or so) that does /exactly/ what I want and it has been the most used app on my phone for a few years now. It's offline-first but syncs reliably, uses the exact interpretation and display of markdown I like, searches and sorts the way I like, integrates with AI only in the ways I want it to (spe…
It's also likely my most used app both on my phone and desktop. I absolutely love it.
Personal apps are the best!
I wrote a notes app in react native just for myself a few years ago (out of frustration after changing notes apps every year or so) that does /exactly/ what I want and it has been the most used app on my phone for a few years now. It's offline-first but syncs reliably, uses the exact interpretation and display of markdown I like, searches and sorts the way I like, integrates with AI only in the ways I want it to (spe…
How do you manage sync? Mine is a WebApp so I use indexedDB, and that's nice so that it works on my computer browser, but I don't want multiple tab synchronization on my phone and it's tricky to handle. I've built something that works, but I'd love to explore other designs.
You said React Native, so there might be a regular app sort of data store to disk.
I wrote a notes app in react native just for myself a few years ago (out of frustration after changing notes apps every year or so) that does /exactly/ what I want and it has been the most used app on my phone for a few years now. It's offline-first but syncs reliably, uses the exact interpretation and display of markdown I like, searches and sorts the way I like, integrates with AI only in the ways I want it to (spe…
I've built a very similar contraption, but without any libraries because I got annoyed at having to relearn a new kind of React after react class components got out of fashion and people started using hooks. I built it out of raw JavaScript and a raw python socket server. How do you manage sync? Mine is a WebApp so I use indexedDB, and that's nice so that it works on my computer browser, but I don't want multiple tab…
> This idea gained popularity with the rise of AI. With AI's assistance, creating software that meets individual needs is now easier than ever. For any decent programmer, writing reusable small applications has always been a thing. Nothing new.
Right now you can just ask for what you need and bring it into existence with a prompt. What a time to be alive.
Let’s hope software complexity doesn’t catch up to this trend.
I wrote a notes app in react native just for myself a few years ago (out of frustration after changing notes apps every year or so) that does /exactly/ what I want and it has been the most used app on my phone for a few years now. It's offline-first but syncs reliably, uses the exact interpretation and display of markdown I like, searches and sorts the way I like, integrates with AI only in the ways I want it to (spe…
And this is why people like Emacs or go for no desktop environment on Linux. Customize it to fit what you need and no further. Then you can just use it without learning where everything is again.