getting on top100 on https://code.golf/
One time I solved a code golf challenge in lolcode
Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
261–270 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#262I invented a programming language where you use Unicode box-drawing characters to draw a structure of boxes and lines: ╓───╖ ║ ! ║ ╙─┬─╜ ┌───╖ ╔═══╗ ┌─────┴─────┤ > ╟──╢ 2 ║ │ ╘═╤═╝ ╚═══╝ ╔════╗ ┌───╖ │ │ ║ −1 ╟──┤ + ╟─┴─┐ │ ╚════╝ ╘═╤═╝ │ │ ┌─┴─╖ │ ╔═══╗ │ │ ! ║ │ ║ 1 ║ │ ╘═╤═╝ │ ╚═╤═╝ │ │ ┌─┴─╖ ┌─┴─╖ │ │ │ × ╟──┤ ? ╟──┘ │ ╘═╤═╝ ╘═╤═╝ └─────┘ │ The language is called Funciton (pronounced: /ˈfʌŋkɪtɒn/) and the above…
That seems way too useful to qualify here :-)
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#263a reimagining of captcha where you make rude hand gestures at the webcam
rudecaptcha.xyz
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#264Someone made an ASCII art bonsai generator in bash, so I ported it to a few lines of JS. Then I made it animate the growth :)
http://web.archive.org/web/20200512153032id_/https://andai.t...
There's no "restart" button, but each refresh produces a unique tree.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#265Someone made an ASCII art bonsai generator in bash, so I ported it to a few lines of JS. Then I made it animate the growth :) http://web.archive.org/web/20200512153032id_/https://andai.t... There's no "restart" button, but each refresh produces a unique tree.
Just a caution for future clickers: This caused my mobile browser to spawn a bunch of print windows and was pretty annoying to exit.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#266I had an exercise bike that came with a heart-rate band monitor, but it only pairs with the stationary bike. I wanted to use it for running to show heart rate zones. So I wrote an android app that pairs with the band, gets reading and make some nicer display. I had no idea how to write flutter, or talk to bluetooth devices, but github and chatGPT helped a lot.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#267Offtopic, but this reminded me about zero byte program:
- HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5920732
- Web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20100105021419/https://peetm.com...
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to me it would already be solved by Minesweepers rules, the clock should be stopped.
Also first click is never a mine (if there's one where you click it's moved to the top left corner).
AFAIK, it wasn't like that on Windows 3.11, it would be interesting to know when this was added.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#269I created a Magic 8 Ball out of an ESP32 based touchscreen that called an API for a quantum random number generator so that the response to your question was seeded with the most bestest random number possible.
very cool, I made something similar, https://github.com/derekburgess/q8ball
Re: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
#270A long time ago I wrote a useless, but fun program that attempts to programmatically recreate a source image by randomly placing randomly sized, randomly coloured rectangles onto a canvas. If the result of this random application of colour is closer to the source image, it's kept, otherwise the changes are discarded. Over time, it gets reasonably close to the source image. https://ajxs.github.io/pbp/
I like how the code is just plain javascript, and less than 114 lines of code. https://ajxs.github.io/pbp/main.js
I was feeling a bit self-conscious about my 2015 Javascript, and gave it a bit of a polish! So it's slightly more than 114 now. I'm glad you appreciated this! The whole idea is built around a very simple mechanism.