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Ask HN: What is your most failed side-project?
I have spent my last year on two (fun) solo projects. One was a good vibes social network that I made an extremely complicated backend, coded the frontend and then decided to drop it. I put it on github and got 3 stars.
Second part of the year I coded a full Twitter clone (with some twists https://www.writedown.co) that I wanted it to become a non-profit but actually noone used it except for my friends.
In total I spent almost a year coding useless stuff. Your experience?
- ErikAugust 11y agoI get a lot of my education through coding "useless stuff" so it always becomes a good way to learn something or other. That being said, several hybrid mobile apps that are no longer living come to mind. Also, an NES emulator that resides at http://www.playnesta.com http://www.playnesta.com - if you're on Chrome or even mobile it's pretty slick.
- arisAlexis 11y agoThis is amazing!!! I am playing double dragon at work LOL
- ErikAugust 11y agoHey there - glad you're liking it. Maybe I'll work on it some more, haha.
- znpy 11y agoI was/am developing a web application to create beautiful flashcards, using LaTex. I coded a very basic MVP that basically let you create a deck of cards and export it to PDF for print and cut. I showed it to some university friends but none of them showed real interest. I still run it on a dokku instance on Digital Ocean, because I use it myself from time to time. If anyone is interested, the stack was golang + gin framework + postgresql + texlive + javascript + bootstrap + mathjax. At the end of this all, it was a nice exercise in building something useful with Go and I now have a nice tool in my toolbox.
- paukiatwee 11y agoI personally built open source personal budget app [1] for fun and experience. I built the app not for profit so there is not failed project. Instead of assume failed, I suggest make it as your portfolio for future employment. [1]: https://github.com/paukiatwee/budgetapp https://github.com/paukiatwee/budgetapp
- arisAlexis 11y agoLearning is always a plus we agree. I mean failure in a sense that it didn't get any love or money and didn't turn out to be what you imagined.
- shanehoban 11y agoShould I count projects that I'm still working on as failing until proven otherwise? If so then https://www.earpod.co https://www.earpod.co
- arisAlexis 11y agoNo :) Only if you drop it
- mod 11y agoLooks nice, kudos.
- fiftyacorn 11y agoI wrote a website to stream google streetview for a given route. I then wrote a client to connect it to the ant+ device(cadence, power meter, speed sensors) on my indoor trainer to allow me to ride the route - http://www.routeviewer.com/ http://www.routeviewer.com/ Unfortunately the refresh rates on streetview were too low, as its not designed for this. Should have built trainerroad
- coderKen 11y agoWhen I first learnt to code I started out building stuff to solve problems around me, turns out it wasn't a problem to people. while in college - myrumate.com [2011] I built a basic web app to help students find roomates, especially students coming from long distances. - thestudybox.com [2012] (I still keep this domain don't know why) question and answer site for students, a cheap stackoverflow clone. - Snatchh.com [2013] A classifieds sites for students to buy and sell stuff.ly They all failed but I learnt a lot about building stuff from scratch to completion alone. Code was most procedural PHP(spaghetti) and I experienced first hand the problem with a large smelly code base. I still build stuff, but it's mostly small personal stuff. Find the code here: http://github.com/nkudo http://github.com/nkudo