HN Explorer

Ask HN: What program are you most proud of making?

15 points by lavp ↗ HN
Inspired by a reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/g86t0t/the_first_program_i_ever_felt_proud_of/), I wanted to ask you guys what program you are proudest of making. It could be a very recent complex program, or one that you did fairly early in your coding careers.

I remember when I was a teenager starting off programming and I wanted to create a sudoku brute force solver as a teenager. Learning and seeing recursion in action for the first time had me in absolute awe. I had great pleasure when it finally worked.

14 comments

[ 0.16 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] thread
DarrenDev
SmartEdit Writer (https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/). It never worked out for me as a commercial app, but it's got a dedicated user base who love it, and it fills a real need amongst creative writers.

It's 100% what it needs to be for its niche set of users: creative writers, Windows desktop users, simple to use, organising, planning, writing, editing (the editing part is unique).

I love the app. Use it all the time myself. It has 1000s of users and almost no support issues. Best thing I've ever built.

Alekhine
This is very cool. I don't suppose Linux is supported?
poletopole
I made a scrappy program (bash/java/sqlite) for my first real job as an adult back when I was in my early twenties that actually was a data entry job. It only took a weekend to make and I ended up fully automating my work and then I quit.
brettkromkamp
Contextualise (https://contextualise.dev/). Been working on semantic knowledge management applications for years and this application is the culmination of that effort (and, still far from perfect and still unfinished, for that matter). But still... satisfied all the same.
bexsella
My program went nowhere, by design. But after a few weeks on a 'new' project using ClearCase and ClearQuest (circa 2017), I was so frustrated with the archaic and painfully bureaucratic system that I decided there was nothing worse, and that to feel better about using it, there had to be something worse. So I made a project management system from scratch to be needlessly bureaucratic. Absolutely everything required approval from a designated project leader.

Want to check something out? You need to wait for approval. Want to check something in? You need to wait for approval? Has someone checked out something that you also need to check out? You need approval twice. Each approval request required a note and priority. It was fiendish.

It was great fun to get started and have this centralised system in place that worked just like I had envisioned. I stopped after a while because I rotated off that project, and was more than happy to see the back of ClearCase and ClearQuest. I should upload the source at some point.

eivarv
Cleave, an application that lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows, tabs, open files/documents and so on. Started because of frequent multitasking heavy work with limited resources.

Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.

Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked by work and other stuff :P

https://cleave.app

procinct
Just chiming in to say this looks really cool. Especially good for a personal laptop where you’re going to be using it for lots of different purposes.
matanrubin
I’ve been searching for something like this for ages. Looks very promising and I can’t wait to try it out.

Does switching contexts necessarily means quitting unneeded applications, or can it just hide them? I’ve always wanted to use macOS multiple desktops feature for managing contexts, but working with multiple windows of the same app makes app switching a nightmare.

Also, what pricing model are you planning to use?

eivarv
Currently, switching contexts means quitting unneeded applications, though I'd certainly be interested in exploring alternative needs, and I'm planning on implementing whitelisting of apps on a context- and/or global basis.

I'm planning on using a pricing model of a one-time, fixed fee per major version, à la Sublime Text.

giantg2
I taught myself Android while in college and created a calculator for alcohol needed at a party based on reversing the BAC formula.
[dead] FatDrunknStupid
I was bored one lunchtime. Looking at my boring settlements app I thought why not add the company logo.gif. Cool. Would be better if it went 'Moo' when clicked. Fun. Was the fave 'cool' application for 6 months. >30 pints in the local. One of the few things that I've written that has been acknowledged by management (*has inspired similar).