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Ask HN: What tools can I build to make your job/life a little bit easier?

8 pointsby raoofalmost 5 years ago
Hi everybody. I&#x27;ve got lots of free time to write an App but I just have some preconditions<p>1. at least have some users<p>2. it has to be useful<p>3. challenging (optional)<p>4. ambitious (optional)<p>5. make some money through patreon or something (I hope)<p>I have some ideas myself but I don&#x27;t know if they meet my preconditions.<p>1. a visual programming tool&#x2F;environment like Opus Magnum or Factorio<p>2. a timeline widget that each frame count as a state in a State Machine (like in Adobe Flash) and you write your program by adjusting the timeline and write code in each frame and you can put the user input as a layer and time travel the whole state of your program like an animation<p>3. turn source code into a State Machine graph where each node is a state of the program and each edge is either a user input or time or some condition to make it easier to understand and modify the software.<p>4. transpile natural language to programming language. for example:<p><pre><code> sort the array [3, 1, 2] in ascending order and name it arr1. when we type that the compiler try to find a template that match that sentence for example: sort the array $param1:[]Int in ascending order and name it $param2:Symbol and there could be many implementation for this sentence in any programming language that we want </code></pre> 5. I wrote PostgRESTui. it&#x27;s postgrest + static server ( + auto generated admin backend, could be added )<p>6. generate backend for your frontend. for example you write your frontend like this.<p><pre><code> let productItem = (p) =&gt; `&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;&#x2F;product&#x2F;${p.id}&quot;&gt;${p.name}&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;${p.img}&quot;&gt;&lt;&#x2F;div&gt;` pages[&quot;^&#x2F;$&quot;] = (req, db) =&gt; `home page ${db.products.map(productItem).join(&quot;&quot;)}` and it figures out what you need for your backend. </code></pre> so do you think any of my ideas worth pursuing or do you having some idea of your own that you don&#x27;t have time to work on but hoping somebody else does. please let me know.

2 comments

gitgudalmost 5 years ago
Here&#x27;s my 2 cents...<p><pre><code> 1. Have some users 2. Be useful 3. Be challenging 4. Be ambitious 5. Monetizable </code></pre> These requirements are so general that they could literally be applied to any project. You should narrow these down to actual things you enjoy (for example; adventure games, language development, embedded systems etc...)<p>Your ideas; 1, 2 and 3 seem very similar so it looks like you have an interest in visual programming and language development. You should start there!<p>&gt; <i>&quot;4. transpile natural language to programming language...&quot;</i><p>This is particularly interesting and could be useful for speech-2-code programming, for people how are unable to type with their hands ([1] also discussed here last week)<p>Finally, it&#x27;s much harder to stay motivated and make someone else app a reality. You might as well use your own ideas, anyone of them could be a fairly popular project leading to new opportunities.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23497756" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23497756</a>
softwaredougalmost 5 years ago
Something that creates a stronger boundary between work and life fore remote workers. Silo my &#x27;work apps&#x27; on my phone&#x2F;laptop to place friction doing work between myself and work things.<p>An example might be having to solve increasingly harder algebra problems to do work ;)<p>Conversely, the same friction between work things and fun things during work hours...