Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

mike.zwobble.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 195 posts

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#41

Post by scosman »

musingsole wrote: post #14
mwcampbell wrote: post #8

> Sometimes I wonder whether it'd be possible to earn a living off mammoth. Although there's an option to donate - I currently get a grand total of £1.15 a week from regular donations - it's not something I push very hard. There's no shame in making the source available but using a license that requires payment for commercial use, like the Prosperity [1] license. [1]: https://prosperitylicense.com/

Also nearly impossible to enforce. This approach just adds a layer of guilt/paranoia in the implied legal consequences.

Don’t spend your time worrying about those who won’t pay. Almost always a better use of time to think about expanding those that do/will. It’s frustrating, but not a good use of time.

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#43

Post by JoeAltmaier »

These kind of translators are fun. Long ago I wrote a PL/M (Intel proprietary compiler)- to - C convertor. It used context to translate the simple looping constructs of PL/M to the most congenial C loop (for, do, while). It translated the single macro mechanism into either 'const foo=x', simple #define or #define with arguments. It moved declarations into context. What it produced looked like C, not 'C/LM'.

It can be a blast to tinker with these, iterating until the output looks pretty sweet. One of my favorite projects. I can imagine the docx - to - css translation allowed for lots of neat tricks.

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#44

Post by bartread »

This is an interesting and thoughtful piece but I think Mike (the author) does rather underestimate his impact.

I never worked with him directly but we both overlapped at Redgate for several years. During the time I was there he wrote code that was integrated into Simple Talk (https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/), which is/was Redgate's website for publishing content, articles, tutorials etc., useful to SQL Server and .NET professionals. I believe he also worked on https://www.sqlservercentral.com/, which remains the leading community site for SQL Server professionals. The old Simple Talk site is several years gone now, sadly, but Mike worked on it during its growth phase and (guessing somewhat here) most successful period.

These are sites that are used and useful to hundreds of thousands of SQL Server and .NET professionals every month. Yes, they are also promotional vehicles for Redgate and its products, and a core part of Redgate's marketing strategy, but it is possible for them to be both marketing and useful.

Mike is an excellent engineer, and very much cut from the get (valuable) things done mould - which mammoth.js firmly underscores. I have no idea what he's doing at the moment but, if you get the opportunity to work with him, you should jump at it.

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#45

Post by abiro »

mwcampbell wrote: post #8

> Sometimes I wonder whether it'd be possible to earn a living off mammoth. Although there's an option to donate - I currently get a grand total of £1.15 a week from regular donations - it's not something I push very hard. There's no shame in making the source available but using a license that requires payment for commercial use, like the Prosperity [1] license. [1]: https://prosperitylicense.com/

The problem with this approach is that it turns open source adoption into a procurement process: the developer who wants to use your projects needs to go through the legal department etc. So if there is any alternative option, employee devs will avoid a dual-licensed package.

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#46

Post by xcambar »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #28
musingsole wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your story and mammoth's origin story really highlight how the Sisyphean corporate world is seemingly at odds -- or at least tangential -- to progress.

Corporate does not care about the job, or the client. Corporate only cares about billable hours.

Predictability, revenue per employee, and predictability of revenue per employee ;)

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#47

Post by oogali »

snarfy wrote: post #15
Wronnay wrote: post #3

I think many devs have that feeling... But often simple things have a very big effect - in my first job I made some simple scripts which imported data from machines into an ERP System. I also made some bigger projects with feature rich GUIs at my first job. The simple scripts probably sill import data every workday and automate a task previously made by humans since multiple years, some of the GUIs weren't even used…

My most used program was a 7 byte .COM I wrote with debug.exe. It made the machine reboot. It took about 15 seconds to write. A friend who worked at the college ended up using it in their scripts. They had a way to do it before but it wasn't as reliable as my little program. That college's infrastructure was used as a model for the rest of the district and so my little program spread to the other colleges.

jmp f000:e05b

Between fiddling with debug.exe and discovering that fixed address, that put me on the path to demystifying technology (or at least understanding everything is approachable).

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#48

Post by alien_ »

Same here, for most of my 15+ years career in IT I've been doing DevOps stuff, mostly writing small scripts and infrastructure code, occasionally hacking on existing projects enough to do drive-by contributions.

About 6 years ago I started AutoSpotting, an open source tool designed to reduce AWS costs by automatically replacing on-demand instances with up to 90% cheaper Spot instances, it was meant to be my playground project for learning golang.

I estimate it saved in aggregate in the tens or maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple companies have been built around my code or reimplementing the same idea.

It's still a side project that I work on occasionally but at some point I tried to monetize it through support and custom development. I failed to get enough traction to become a full time job, currently make some $400/month from about a dozen users whom I sell precompiled binaries through Patreon.

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#49

Post by logotype »

I work in finance. About 5 years ago I started building a FIX library on my spare time, out of curiosity. Over the years it has been countless fin tech start-ups as well as big companies reaching out to me about the library, suggesting fixes and features. Since then I have long lost the interest in the technology which enables connectivity to financial exchanges to automate trades, but I keep working on the library for the benefit of others and just the joy of creating something. But what’s the actual impact? Enabling companies getting richer? Greed?

https://gitlab.com/logotype/fixparser

Re: My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry

#50

Post by tppiotrowski »

Companies isolate devs from customers by using Product Managers. PMs interview customers and then decide what to build. By the time the tasks get to the dev it’s hard to understand the motivation and impact. The best companies I’ve worked at put the engineers and customers in close contact so they understood the impact and shortcomings in their work. Alternately you need to foster a culture of shared purpose where you have “faith” that your work has impact.
Post reply on HN