Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cattle and pets both exist. You want cattle? Make cattle. You want pets? Make pets. Why the absolution?
Cattle don’t make good pets.
Not all animals are cattle ;)
It's okay to make something nobody wants
201–208 of 208 posts
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#202I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product. Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop. I wish I'd learned that sooner.
> Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
Glad you’ve seen the light. Too many fail to recognise that this another type of hacking and painting, but without the backing of venture capital. Pure unadultared freedom. Riskier too.
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#203Yep, I do that. https://www.etsy.com/shop/DigitalHorology Nobody is buying, but I love making weird clocks.
Your weird clocks are very cool!
Seeing the Game of Life display stirred a memory in me of finding this book in the public library at a very influential age and obsessing over it (I checked it out multiple times):
Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds (A. K. Dewdney, 1987) https://archive.org/details/armchairuniverse0000dewd_x2e7/pa...
I remember being fascinated by Conway's Game of Life (and implementing it a few times in a few languages) and, of course, also became fascinated by fractals, but never understood them as well.
I haven't thought about it, but that book was incredibly important to my path through the world of programming.
Your prices are surprisingly low. I assume you're not trying to make money so much as scratch an itch, but I wonder if you'd sell even more if you charged a more premium price and added a few more details / higher quality pictures.
Really cool work, dude - thanks for sharing and for the nostalgia trip.
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#204Yep, I do that. https://www.etsy.com/shop/DigitalHorology Nobody is buying, but I love making weird clocks.
Your weird clocks are very cool! Seeing the Game of Life display stirred a memory in me of finding this book in the public library at a very influential age and obsessing over it (I checked it out multiple times): Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds (A. K. Dewdney, 1987) https://archive.org/details/armchairuniverse0000dewd_x2e7/pa... I remember being fascinated by Conway's Game of Life (and implement…
Wow, thanks!!!
I too was interested in fractals back then. I attended a fascinating lecture by Dr. Mandelbrot around 1988.
Regarding pricing: yes, I will raise prices after I make a few more sales and establish myself as a reputable Etsy seller. I also agree that I need to improve the listings with more details and better product photos. Thanks for the feedback!
It looks like I've sold out of some items, so they've been de-listed on Etsy.
If anyone else is interested in seeing what I'm building...
Web: https://digitalhorology.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalhorology Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalhorology
I'll build more inventory and do a full post on Show HN sometime soon.
Thanks again!
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#205I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product. Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop. I wish I'd learned that sooner.
It's also worth noting that most of what can and probably should be built make terrible products.
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#206This article resonated with me a lot and had me reflecting on my journey writing komorebi. I started writing komorebi because I had recently migrated to Windows and was really struggling without a tiling window manager. I didn't know anything about Win32 APIs when I started, or much about Rust either, actually. Fast forward to today, and komorebi is sitting at 35k downloads, supported by a huge Discord server, a vibr…
I really like your interpretation of psychology on resultant codebases. Personally, I have very mild bipolar-like tendencies, and I find that I don't really get much done except in my "manic" phases. If I'm feeling more charitable to myself I call it an explore/exploit loop. I consider it one of life's many seasons, and don't mind the oscillations too much. However, while I've read serene code, my own code often read…
Oh that's interesting! I've been experiencing a similar thing recently. If I'm satisfied with life, there's not much drive to code, it feels like it's just going to disturb my peace.
But when I'm feeling like stuff just isn't good enough and something must be done, "doing something" means writing code, either until I'm satisfied or until I'm tired. Sometimes the codebases in my day job don't satisfy, so I contribute to open source instead, as that feels more impactful and permanent.
I wonder how many projects came into existence just because someone was unhappy with the way things were and the only thing they could do that felt impactful was programming.
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#207hehe, that's how I made `m4b-tool`[1] - a command line tool written in PHP (!) using external tools to merge audio files to a single iTunes compatible m4b file. It started as one single simple script and now has grown into a maintenance hell of a thing, but I still use it on a weekly basis :-) Unfortunately atm I cannot even afford the time to redirect the github sponsoring income to charities[2], but by the end of t…
Just want to say thank you!
Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants
#208hehe, that's how I made `m4b-tool`[1] - a command line tool written in PHP (!) using external tools to merge audio files to a single iTunes compatible m4b file. It started as one single simple script and now has grown into a maintenance hell of a thing, but I still use it on a weekly basis :-) Unfortunately atm I cannot even afford the time to redirect the github sponsoring income to charities[2], but by the end of t…
Just want to say thank you!
glad you like it :-)