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Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today (https://instacalc.com https://instacalc.com). The biggest impetus was having a friend usin

by kalid 10y ago

Shameless plug, I just launched an overhaul to a side project today (https://instacalc.com https://instacalc.com). The biggest impetus was having a friend using the old version who pinged me with some feature requests. It reminded me that the service can help people I know directly and gave me a huge boost of motivation. If friends and family are using it, you'll want to help them out :).

otoburb 10y ago
InstaCalc is great! Love the natural language oriented input for calculations. Tangentially related to the article, did BetterExplained itself start out as a side project, or did you double-down from the start?
- kalid 10y ago
  Thanks! BetterExplained started as a collection of notes on my university website: Sadly after a decade the CS department shut down my alumni account :(. But I have a cached backup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kazad/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.pri... https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ I started BetterExplained about 10 years ago exactly (wow), just taking some of the notes online. Thankfully they were on evergreen math topics (divergence, flux, gradients... stuff I desperately wanted intuitions for) and it grew from there. I had been thinking of doing a decade year retrospective on what's worked/not worked in terms of keeping motivation and momentum for the projects (so far, so good). Thanks for the reminder!
  - sharmi 10y ago
    Looking forward to the retrospective post! Motivation tends to be highly fluctuating. Perseverance is the key to success. Would love to hear how you maintained a decade long streak.
rokhayakebe 10y ago
Super awesome. You can save Calcs. Ways to 1Million in Yearly Recurring Revenue: https://instacalc.com/50021 https://instacalc.com/50021
- kalid 10y ago
  Thanks! Yes, I wanted to make the "pastebin of calculators" :).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brechtm 10y ago
Doesn't seem to work on Safari (9.1.3 on macOS).
- kalid 10y ago
  Ack, I've seen rendering issues on certain browsers. Thanks for the version number, it's really helpful for debugging.
- kalid 10y ago
  Found and fixed the bug, should be working now. (For what it's worth, I was using fat arrow functions in javascript, which aren't supported in all browsers yet. Forgot to compile it down to ES2015.)
wingerlang 10y ago
Does it have an API? I'd like to plug it into Alfred.
- kalid 10y ago
  No API yet but that's a great suggestion, thanks.

by kalid 10y ago

otoburb 10y ago

InstaCalc is great! Love the natural language oriented input for calculations. Tangentially related to the article, did BetterExplained itself start out as a side project, or did you double-down from the start?

kalid 10y ago
Thanks! BetterExplained started as a collection of notes on my university website: Sadly after a decade the CS department shut down my alumni account :(. But I have a cached backup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kazad/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150708043012/http://www.cs.pri... https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ https://betterexplained.com/~kazad/ I started BetterExplained about 10 years ago exactly (wow), just taking some of the notes online. Thankfully they were on evergreen math topics (divergence, flux, gradients... stuff I desperately wanted intuitions for) and it grew from there. I had been thinking of doing a decade year retrospective on what's worked/not worked in terms of keeping motivation and momentum for the projects (so far, so good). Thanks for the reminder!
- sharmi 10y ago
  Looking forward to the retrospective post! Motivation tends to be highly fluctuating. Perseverance is the key to success. Would love to hear how you maintained a decade long streak.

rokhayakebe 10y ago

Super awesome. You can save Calcs. Ways to 1Million in Yearly Recurring Revenue: https://instacalc.com/50021 https://instacalc.com/50021

kalid 10y ago
Thanks! Yes, I wanted to make the "pastebin of calculators" :).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

brechtm 10y ago

Doesn't seem to work on Safari (9.1.3 on macOS).

kalid 10y ago
Ack, I've seen rendering issues on certain browsers. Thanks for the version number, it's really helpful for debugging.
kalid 10y ago
Found and fixed the bug, should be working now. (For what it's worth, I was using fat arrow functions in javascript, which aren't supported in all browsers yet. Forgot to compile it down to ES2015.)

wingerlang 10y ago

Does it have an API? I'd like to plug it into Alfred.

kalid 10y ago
No API yet but that's a great suggestion, thanks.