Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?

- Python-based pipe-objects-not-strings shell with cluster and database support deeply integrated. Twenty years later, it has turned into Marcel (https://marceltheshell.org), and I’m still the only one using it AFAIK.

- Backup utility for Linux, with characteristics of Time Machine. Been using it for five years, it keeps daily, monthly, yearly full backups, relying on hard links for files that don’t change. Handles both local and remote (to my Raspberry Pi).

I found no free optical design software that would run on Mac, so I coded something up to do some paraxial ray tracing ( maybe more, I'd have to dig up the code) and (this is the good part) draw lens diagrams from the specifications.

Pretty simple, but it was fun to do. Very little available for Linux either. Physics and optics people want to have fun, too.

Much of it was just parsing the input data.

I do recall a design and/or analysis program written in Basic, but it wanted a particular basic interpreter, and I forgot if it had porting problems. Must have. I don't recall using the program.

Oddest bit was something I did on my own for Sun flex office. I would get the list of scheduled occupants and their office choice and overlay that on a map of the office suite, for a "who is where" map.

On a "real" work task, I learned how to write graphics commands in Illustrator 3 format. I may have used that on this project.

But more generally, tacking the AI header code to the file made it valid Postscript/Illustrator format.

Someone once told me that apparently some local sports reporters' weekly tips are used with some seed money and the proceeds are given to charity and I was intrigued enough to spend a few days building something that could test that out.

https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

I forked it back in 2005 because the maintainer wasn't interested in the direction my patches were going. My version has diverged dramatically from the current version.

I have no idea how many hours I've put into it over 19 years. It has needed surprisingly little care and feeding (which I'd attribute to it being a simple PHP app).

I've used it nearly daily in the last 19 years.

[0] https://tt-rss.org/

Edit: I also maintain a set of scripts to import my SMS from phone backups into my IMAP mailbox. Having a single place to search for my written communication is wonderful.

The most recent is a Chrome extension that plays a "server down" tone any time the word "critical" appears on our system monitoring web page (Netdata). It plays that tone when the number of "critical" words goes up, and plays a "server up" tone when the number goes down. It's dead simple and works to give me audio alerts so that when I'm hyper-focused on something, I can get pulled out of it by the "server down" tone. It's gone over well with my coworkers as well.

It uses an on-device model for language detection and results are sub 0.3s thanks to groq

If someone wants to try: https://testflight.apple.com/join/GBxPMw2h

For instance, I wrote a tool that tells me how many simultaneous users I need to simulate X number of real users who are hitting the server only intermittently.

If you write tools for your own use, unless they are really big you tend not to bother with coding style conventions. The important thing is being able to code it up quickly.

I used to write everything is Perl, but I’ve switched to Python. It’s a great rapid prototyping language, and basically everything I do is a prototype.

It allows me to launch vscode projects and devcontainers I often work on very quickly. Saves me so much time!

I open sourced it 8 years ago but it was not the original intention. I wrote it for myself. https://github.com/akalenuk/16counters

I wrote it in MASM32. It's therefore a tiny .exe file of about 7 KB. I spent maybe a few hours initially, but I've been adding features one-by-one for several years. I use it a few times a month.

My solution also manages SSL via Cloudflare and integrates with Stripe for simple fixed-price subscription billing models. The idea here is to be able to iterate on product ideas quickly without spending a day each time figuring out authentication and billing.

I did set up a marketing site at the time so that others could use it, but I don't have any users, and I'm happy to maintain it just for my own projects (half a dozen now).

It took me 2-3 weeks to make so on net I have probably not saved much time, but it really helps reduce the friction of launching things which I think is valuable.

[1] - https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy

- My blog, which has lots of weird pages for stats, time jumps, old games/tools/utilities. - Flight tracker app. - Home control app (because HA was a pain to keep updated). - Wood working tool helper for my dad.

And more. It's liberating.

I built a pretty simple web app that tracks a bunch of vendors and emails me when items matching my filters come in stock!

I originally thought more people might use it, but I have basically 6 teachers.

I think it took me like an hour to make and I use it several times a week.