[HN Gopher] Take my app ideas
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Take my app ideas
        
       Author : jermaustin1
       Score  : 99 points
       Date   : 2022-05-13 15:25 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (austinhenley.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (austinhenley.com)
        
       | pie_flavor wrote:
       | For the clipboard one, I use ClipboardFusion. Some of the most
       | intuitive software I think I've ever used, second only to
       | Microsoft Office.
        
       | ricardobeat wrote:
       | Pretty sure the "REDACTED" one is just for effect. The way back
       | machine has the page archived from two days ago and doesn't show
       | any changes.
        
         | azhenley wrote:
         | The post is nearly a month old.
        
       | floucky wrote:
       | Guys, I have the best (but also the worst) idea: an application
       | where you can rent toilets !
        
         | __del__ wrote:
         | i've given it a bit of thought over the years, and a reputation
         | system that accurately represents the stinking realities of
         | letting someone use your toilet, and can identify creeps who'll
         | listen at the door or video the entire event, seems to be the
         | most difficult thing to solve. it seems like such a service
         | would work well in civilized countries like mexico, and be an
         | absolute shit show in the united states.
        
       | errantmind wrote:
       | Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive. The nuance
       | encountered while 'executing' dwarfs their significance. Anyone
       | who has built anything knows this.
       | 
       | The faster we collectively realize this, the faster we'll be able
       | to reign in the excesses of IP law.
        
         | bryanrasmussen wrote:
         | >Thinking app ideas are worth anything is naive.
         | 
         | lots of people are saying this here, I agree, pretty much,
         | almost all the time, because almost all ideas are ideas that
         | people have had. Especially when they are product ideas.
         | 
         | But on the other hand, whenever I hear this ideas are
         | worthless, I do get a reflexive kick in my gut against
         | conventional bullshit that everyone has agreed to believe in to
         | fight against the old fashioned bullshit people used to
         | believe, which was that ideas were valuable in themselves. And
         | when I get that little reflexive kick in my gut I think,
         | amazingly these people have never heard about pagerank.
         | 
         | I mean sure, without a good execution they wouldn't have
         | anything, but the idea was definitely worth quite a bit more
         | than "hey what if we made Yahoo, but improved the execution a
         | bit?"
        
       | bilater wrote:
       | 1st is Sheet2Site 2nd is Twitter Spaces 3rd is one of a million
       | premium clipboard chrome extensions
        
       | corobo wrote:
       | > <p>4. Good try.</p>
       | 
       | Haha. Someone had to try looking at the git history, figured I
       | had nothing better to do
        
       | mentos wrote:
       | I know ideas are a dime a dozen but can anyone recommend what the
       | best market for ideas is?
        
       | seanlinehan wrote:
       | For idea #2, check out Attention:
       | https://apps.apple.com/app/id1574914307
        
       | joeatwork wrote:
       | The Glide app, which takes spreadsheets and makes them into full
       | featured apps and websites, fits the bill of one of these ideas.
       | https://www.glideapps.com/
        
       | spencerchubb wrote:
       | The first one is basically notion
        
         | joegahona wrote:
         | This was my first thought too. I use this all the time for this
         | reason.
        
       | LaputanMachine wrote:
       | Some app ideas from Krzysztof Kowalczyk (author of Sumatra PDF):
       | https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815...
        
       | thenerdhead wrote:
       | The ironic part about free ideas is that there's many people who
       | have productized ideas as a newsletter you pay for. Ideas are
       | dime a dozen. Execution is what matters. Hardly anyone will even
       | embark on an idea let alone do it well.
        
         | hardwaresofton wrote:
         | Guilty as charged
         | 
         | https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io
         | 
         | Though my reasoning is more that I know I'll never get to
         | executing on all the ideas I have so I hope someone else can
         | validate and execute
        
           | codazoda wrote:
           | How do you monitize this, since it's free to sub?
        
             | thenerdhead wrote:
             | I assume by selling sponsorships or products like everyone
             | else.
        
               | hardwaresofton wrote:
               | You're right! I do think a premium tier could work
               | though.
               | 
               | Kind of hard because ideas are somewhat worthless without
               | execution!
        
             | hardwaresofton wrote:
             | Hey sorry getting to this late but two routes I laid out in
             | the first issue:
             | 
             | - premium tier (released 3 days early, higher Idea
             | tier/grade average)
             | 
             | - advertising blurb next to the tl;dr
             | 
             | Will probably do one or the other -- that's all I can think
             | of right now!
             | 
             | I mentioned this in the first issue as well!
        
       | jacknews wrote:
       | lol, only 5 fairly crappy/generic/obvious ideas, one of which is
       | presumably too good (or way too crappy) to share? Sorry to be
       | harsh, but you can keep them.
       | 
       | I always maintain that ideas can be valuable in themselves,
       | against the repeated VC argument that 'ideas are worthless', but
       | this is an example where the VCs are right.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kanonieer wrote:
         | At first, this comment comes off as harsh but then considering
         | the author's tone which essentially feels like him gracing the
         | readers with a sprinkle of what he presumably considers a
         | worthy charity.
         | 
         | Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even
         | realize how crass they might come across.
        
           | bryans wrote:
           | > Some people are so full of themselves that they don't even
           | realize how crass they might come across.
           | 
           | An appropriately ironic comment, given that you just
           | arrogantly belittled someone while also accusing them of
           | narcissism, despite the author plainly writing that they
           | don't claim any of the ideas are good. Next time RTFA before
           | spouting inflammatory nonsense.
           | 
           | "I'd rather give my ideas away than let them go to waste. Who
           | knows if they are even good? The hard part is the execution
           | anyway."
        
             | kanonieer wrote:
             | It's my take on how the author comes off as. You're free to
             | disagree, even if the crux of your argument is as silly as
             | chanting "RTFA". It's good that you're passionate about
             | your defense of the author but unfortunately you haven't
             | convinced me.
        
               | bryans wrote:
               | You didn't offer a take on what the author said, as
               | evidenced by the fact that the author made zero claims of
               | grandeur or even goodness, and the entire premise of the
               | article wasn't the ideas themselves, but to encourage
               | other people to explore and share their old ideas whether
               | they're good or not.
               | 
               | So in this case, RTFA becomes really important and not
               | some "silly chant." Because instead of reacting to what
               | they actually wrote, you've instead concocted a story
               | about this person in your head, and then attempted to
               | belittle them for it.
               | 
               | I challenge you to quote any line from the article where
               | the author says anything remotely "full of themselves" or
               | "crass." You won't be able to do it, because it doesn't
               | exist, and you're just being shamefully inflammatory for
               | no reason.
        
               | kanonieer wrote:
               | Still not convinced, sorry. If you're a friend of the
               | author, tell him that's the way he came across _to me_.
               | My take does not define him or present the absolute truth
               | on his presence, so you can take a deep breath. :)
        
               | bryans wrote:
               | I simply asked you to copy and paste a single sentence to
               | act as an example representative of your "take," but
               | instead, you're deflecting and acting even more
               | inflammatory. The simple fact is that you didn't read the
               | article, and instead made derogatory comments about
               | someone based on things they didn't say, and that has no
               | place anywhere, much less HN.
        
         | sixQuarks wrote:
         | You're getting downvoted but I agree with you. Too many people
         | have ideas where they haven't thought about monetization and/or
         | they have no domain expertise.
         | 
         | I've never seen an actual good biz idea that someone was
         | willing to share online
        
           | hunterb123 wrote:
           | Noone said these were for a business.
           | 
           | These are app ideas. You don't have to monetize everything,
           | some things can just be for fun / rep / learning / sharing /
           | etc.
        
             | azhenley wrote:
             | Exactly!
             | 
             | "Why I prefer making useless stuff"
             | https://austinhenley.com/blog/makinguselessstuff.html
        
       | bentossell wrote:
       | The first idea on the list: " Create an auto-updating website
       | from a Google Doc or Sheet" can be done pretty easily already,
       | without writing code.
       | 
       | (I'm the founder of a company, Makerpad[*], that teaches people
       | no-code)
       | 
       | Glide[1] - lets you create apps from a google sheet. Set up the
       | template connected to your data and as it updates, your app will
       | too.
       | 
       | Stacker[2] - build web-apps without code. Supports Airtable and
       | most recently, Sheets.
       | 
       | Softr[3] - similar for websites but using Airtable as the data
       | source. I think Sheets support will come soon.
       | 
       | Sheets2Site [4] - website builder with google sheets.
       | 
       | For GoogleDocs you can use parameters in the doc that change
       | using something like Zapier (disclaimer: they acquired my company
       | last year). I haven't explored it the other way around eg. Data
       | into a google doc updating something elsewhere.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.makerpad.co/ [1] https://www.glideapps.com/ [2]
       | https://www.stackerhq.com/ [3] https://www.softr.io/ [4]
       | https://www.sheet2site.com/
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | just a quick feedback: your logo is very similar to Medium's.
         | in fact, at first I thought you used Medium, in line with the
         | company's mission to avoid code!
        
           | Vladimof wrote:
           | His logo is an M and Medium's logo is a globe?
        
             | bowsamic wrote:
             | One of mediums old logos was an M like this
             | https://www.creativebloq.com/news/medium-reveals-a-new-
             | logo-...
        
               | Vladimof wrote:
               | Also, maybe the M logo was already common before Medium
               | came along... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/201
               | 5-06-08/how-77-me...
        
           | bentossell wrote:
           | Yeh never great with logos so just used an 'm' - haven't had
           | any issues yet...
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | A few others
         | 
         | - Neighbor wrath saver: Constantly listen for shower and other
         | bathroom noises and shut off any alarms if the user is deemed
         | to be inside the bathroom and unable to reach the phone.
         | 
         | - Maps optimizer: Constantly listen to the accelerometer and if
         | you determine the pattern to be the person running and there is
         | a Facebook or Google calendar event starting within 30 minutes,
         | automatically start navigating to it. If there are multiple
         | simultaneous events in the calendar, try to determine which one
         | the user is running towards and help the user reach that
         | particular event. But also listen to the microphone and stop
         | navigation if the user yells "shut up". Increase the font size
         | and button size as well if the user is trying to operate phone
         | while running.
         | 
         | - Caltrain ticket optimizer: If your GPS location is
         | approaching a Caltrain station and the train is due to arrive
         | within 3 minutes such that you're worried about purchasing a
         | ticket in time, automatically download the Caltrain app and
         | purchase a ticket for you so you don't have to fiddle with the
         | machine. Work with Caltrain Inc so that it can unpurchase the
         | ticket if you don't actually board the train
         | 
         | - Laundry optimizer: Automatically listen for sounds of laundry
         | machines starting and remind you in 35 minutes later if it's
         | the sound of a washer starting, or 45 minutes later if it's the
         | sound of a dryer starting
         | 
         | - Cooking optimizer: Use front camera to determine if the
         | user's hand is full of flour, oil, egg and if so, enable voice
         | control of the UI of sorts e.g. "scroll down slightly", "kill
         | that popup", "don't lock screen for the next hour" etc.
         | 
         | - Use the phone as a bluetooth mouse using the flashlight, rear
         | camera, and accelerometer to determine motion on the table.
         | 
         | ...
        
           | stardenburden wrote:
           | Everything but the last idea seem very annoying, prone to
           | failure and highly battery-draining
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | In particular, most of these require always on audio and in
             | some cases video scanning and recognition. My distant
             | memory is that you can record audio on a fairly small
             | processor and power budget, but video is expensive no
             | matter what you do, and running the sort of pattern
             | recognition or worse yet machine learning needed to
             | actually do anything useful with it would be murder on your
             | battery if you were unplugged and on performance even if
             | you weren't. (This might change with the wide availability
             | of hardware specifically designed for these tasks (TPUs),
             | but we're not quite there yet and I don't know how general
             | that will ever be)
        
             | dheera wrote:
             | > very annoying
             | 
             | They should use machine learning to learn how to not be
             | annoying then. This is possible, it's just big companies
             | have too much momentum to make useful products nowadays
             | 
             | > highly battery-draining
             | 
             | Having demand will will be motivation for better battery
             | research.
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | Why not just use wordpress + wysiwyg editor similar to *docs,
         | and you're done?
        
           | potatolicious wrote:
           | - I'd have to set up the WP instance and maintain it. I'd
           | have to manage the account(s) on it. I'd have to manage the
           | plugins and all of the sundry parts of running a web service.
           | 
           | - The WYSIWYG editor isn't as good as GDocs (or Word, or
           | insert other popular apps)
           | 
           | - Collaborative authoring is a pain. GDocs has this built in,
           | via accounts everyone already has.
           | 
           | The utility of ease of use/low-friction/lightweight-ness
           | can't be overstated. Getting rid of even a small amount of
           | friction from systems often pays itself back exponentially.
        
           | vageli wrote:
           | Now you have to set up accounts and manage wordpress versus
           | sharing a google doc or something similar.
        
           | bentossell wrote:
           | I dont really like using WP. Lots of alternatives out there
           | that do great stuff.
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | Whenever I see twitter/social clone ideas I think of a bar game
       | from my snarky too-clever-by-half friends and I used to play in
       | the 90s, we called "pitch it," where you had to express a tv show
       | or movie as the pitch the writer made.
       | 
       | Some gems included:
       | 
       | - A guy and a sass-talking car fight crime together.
       | 
       | - Seven Samurai meets the Equalizer, but with american war
       | criminals.
       | 
       | - Screwball comedy but with homages and tropes instead of sight
       | gags and jokes, with an ensamble cast of has beens doing swan
       | song performances.
       | 
       | When I hear about twitter clones, the pitches for platforms
       | become the jokes we make about them:
       | 
       | - a way for old people to yell at each other.
       | 
       | - bully safari, where you can go to antagonize people without
       | conseqences.
       | 
       | - a way for people to share pictures of their butts.
       | 
       | - Orwell's 'two minutes of hate'
       | 
       | - a fame simulator where robots flatter you
       | 
       | - a place for smart people to act stupid
       | 
       | - warcraft for passive aggression
       | 
       | These are mostly empty snark, but some of them can be funny, and
       | they take us out of thinking that we should re-make something we
       | have today with some minor augmentation, independent of the
       | original context it was created, and start looking at what
       | something genuinely new might be.
        
         | scubbo wrote:
         | My guesses:
         | 
         | - Knight Rider
         | 
         | - Maybe "The Expendables"?
         | 
         | - No idea, but I feel like I want to watch it!
        
           | helm33 wrote:
           | - Maybe "The Expendables"? -> Pretty sure this is "The A
           | Team"
        
         | loxias wrote:
         | I'm curious about the last 4! (penultimate one: "HN comment
         | section"?) ;-)
        
         | rcurry wrote:
         | I came up with a fun game that's along the line of your snarky
         | movie game. I call it Mixed Up Movies, where you have to create
         | a movie title and description that combines two separate movies
         | into one. You write the description and provide the real actors
         | and the other folks have to guess the name of the movie.
         | 
         | For instance:
         | 
         | Hilarity ensues when a mild-mannered suburban family adopts a
         | troubled San Francisco homicide detective.
         | 
         | Clint Eastwood, John Lithgow, and Margaret Langrick star in?
         | 
         | Dirty Harry and The Hendersons
         | 
         | Or:
         | 
         | A retired English butler reminiscences about his time in
         | service to a Lord's estate while also trying to convince his
         | fellow townsfolk that recently arrived aliens come in peace.
         | 
         | Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins star in?
         | 
         | The Remains of the Day the Earth Stood Still.
         | 
         | Or:
         | 
         | The boss of a Los Angeles crime syndicate enlists the help of a
         | top British Spy to help recover a stolen briefcase by going
         | undercover at an exclusive high-stakes poker game.
         | 
         | Ving Rames, Daniel Craig, and Samuel L Jackson star in?
         | 
         | Casino Royale With Cheese
        
           | dan-robertson wrote:
           | The stupid game along these lines that I like is to describe
           | a made up film with a title that rhymes with some known film
           | by modifying the description of the film, e.g.
           | 
           | Dominic Toretto and his street racer friends go around making
           | some ridiculous claims.
           | 
           | An FBI agent must enlist the help of a killer to catch a
           | dangerous fiend, who's crime is shushing people on public
           | transport.
           | 
           | An archaeologist/adventurer is hired to venture inside a
           | proton to see what particles he can find.
        
           | loxias wrote:
           | > where you have to create a movie title and description that
           | combines two separate movies into one
           | 
           | You might enjoy Says You (public radio show). They do this
           | category from time to time. Most recently 2 weeks ago,
           | SY-2630, round 3, starts at ~20:30 in. :)
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | If you haven't seen it yet, you might enjoy
         | https://screenrant.com/tag/pitch-meeting/
        
       | kodablah wrote:
       | Take mine too: https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues
        
       | 6510 wrote:
       | I never share the good ideas. Reasonable ones I share but only
       | with the right person. The response is often moaning. Not very
       | useful.
       | 
       | The list is not very good but if we all post one of those
       | mythical "easy to come by" good ideas that everyone is having
       | simultaneously.... (hah)
       | 
       | My idea would be "take my ideas app" an app where people can
       | share their startup ideas. Nice categories, each topic is an
       | idea. Replies are either 1) text 2) a link to a similar service
       | 3) a link to a product or service useful for implementation of
       | the idea with a text explaining how 4) useful contact details
       | that can be accessed if you attempt to build the idea.
        
       | monkin wrote:
       | All of your ideas already exists. It's not about having ideas or
       | sharing them, because there's thousands of people who have the
       | same thought. What actually makes a difference is building them.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | I have ideas that I don't share with people that I know would
         | be able to build them. Posting ideas I'm interested in on a
         | site like this, for example, is not something I would do.
         | 
         | Ideas _are_ worthless on their own. Building them is what
         | matters. This takes time and skill. Most people on a site like
         | this have the skills to build on an app idea, but everyone has
         | varying levels of time. So if I post an idea here, there 's a
         | good chance someone with more time than me will read it, and
         | might steal it. If I sit on the idea until I eventually get
         | around to executing it, then the chance of someone beating me
         | to market is much lower.
         | 
         | The worst thing that could happen is that I never build it, and
         | no one else does either, so the world misses out. That's
         | personally less of a problem for me than watching someone steal
         | my idea.
        
           | JadeNB wrote:
           | > So if I post an idea here, there's a good chance someone
           | with more time than me will read it, and might steal it.
           | 
           | I think describing the process of telling someone a good
           | idea, and having them act on it, as "stealing" your idea is
           | not necessarily a healthy way of thinking about ideas.
        
           | MarcelOlsz wrote:
           | I tell everyone my ideas all the time. So far nobody has ever
           | built them. The lesson I learned here, is that I am actually
           | an idiot. Maybe you should share your ideas. You might learn
           | something as well.
        
         | travisjungroth wrote:
         | I like when people share their ideas.
        
         | ntoskrnl wrote:
         | I'd say what actually makes a difference is sharing/marketing
         | projects after you build them. If other people don't know your
         | project exists, you'll end up with no users and you'll see your
         | idea on various "stuff I wish existed" lists. Then one day you
         | see a clone of your project and think someone ripped you off,
         | when in reality they never heard of you and they were just
         | better at selling themselves.
        
           | monkin wrote:
           | That's the whole process of building them.
        
         | loceng wrote:
         | Building them and then people being aware they exist.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | loxias wrote:
         | Amen to this. I've worked in enough exciting startups to know
         | that having good, great, even amazing ideas are pretty easy
         | compared to execution. I love great ideas, and great idea
         | companies. But they're not hard.
         | 
         | More valuable would be prescient knowledge of social trends, a
         | team that's really good at execution, or knowledge of some
         | existing pain point that still doesn't have a solution.
        
         | MathCodeLove wrote:
         | Comments like your express an unfortunately common, yet
         | incredibly reductive, sentiment. Execution of course matters.
         | But the innate value of an idea is also extremely important. A
         | poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well
         | executed bad idea.
        
           | lelanthran wrote:
           | > A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well
           | executed bad idea.
           | 
           | That'd be something I've never seen. Any examples?
        
           | slightwinder wrote:
           | > But the innate value of an idea is also extremely
           | important.
           | 
           | Disputable. Many people have many ideas. Just the mass alone
           | diminishes the general value of ideas.
           | 
           | > A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well
           | executed bad idea.
           | 
           | Also disputable. For the evaluation, result matters most. And
           | a bad idea which still solves a problem, is better than a
           | good idea which just exists in its own isolated bubble, doing
           | nothing worthful.
           | 
           | The tech-world is full of fancy oversmart ideas and their
           | implementations. Yet many of them fail because neither a good
           | idea, nor some half decent implementation alone have enough
           | worth to survive.
        
           | monkin wrote:
           | There's nothing reductive in my comment. I didn't mention the
           | quality of execution, yet you have to build something to
           | learn from it, even if it's a bad idea. Having just ideas
           | bring nothing to the table, no matter how good they are. Here
           | we come to another interesting fact: companies will pivot
           | many times after building the initial idea.
        
             | hackernewds wrote:
             | https://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-11
        
           | fleetwoodsnack wrote:
           | Yep, and reformulations of similar ideas also tend to
           | introduce subtle and nuanced changes that make for
           | substantive distinctions.
        
           | loxias wrote:
           | > A poorly executed good idea can easily out perform a well
           | executed bad idea.
           | 
           | One of the maxims I adopted from a mentor was that good
           | execution of a mediocre idea will beat poor execution of a
           | great idea. So far, it's been true everywhere I look.
           | 
           | We're surrounded with decent execution of horrible ideas.
           | 
           | Meant with all due respect, but.. I think you've got it
           | backwards? Great ideas have no innate value, they're easy to
           | come up with.
        
       | ivanmontillam wrote:
       | For the 2nd one, if Twitter is really a "protocol" one could
       | tweet special crafted links and make a Twitter client app that
       | parsed these links and Twitter threads and using something like
       | _ffmpeg_ to compile a single audio stream.
       | 
       | If more replies are added to the conversation, one can rebuild
       | the _ffmpeg_ audio file locally. This could be awesome for blind
       | people, and a big win for accessibility.
       | 
       | Please note I'm not talking about text-to-speech systems, I'm
       | talking about the autors speaking in specially crafted tweets
       | (that results in audio files saved in some server and them some
       | app parsing them as a single file).
       | 
       | The 3rd one already exists.
       | 
       | Windows can track the Clipboard history, at the Clipboard
       | settings, just enable it and start using the "Windows logo key +
       | V" key combo to open the clipboard context menu and select any of
       | the latest copied items (including images).
       | 
       | The Samsung keyboard at Android also does this as well.
       | 
       | Maybe there's something like this for Linux and Apple equipment,
       | I don't know.
       | 
       | The 4rth one I tried using the Web Archive to retrieve it, but it
       | wasn't available. haha.
       | 
       | The 5th one exists as an app called Chklsty[0]. What you're
       | needing is checklists for repeated processes. It's not for
       | single-use to-do lists.
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | [0]: https://hello.chklsty.com/
        
         | forgotpwd16 wrote:
         | >Windows can track the Clipboard history
         | 
         | They aren't asking for a generic clipboard manager (that are
         | numerous) but one that can log _only_ URLs. A more flexible
         | implementation will be for the manager to include filter
         | functionality for what it logs. Afaik none has this.
        
       | bartaxyz wrote:
       | I've started building something like the last idea. I call it
       | very simply Daily Tasks[0]. It's by no means finished yet, but it
       | does feel good to have an idea validated by reading about it from
       | this blog post.
       | 
       | [0] https://ondrejbarta.com/pet-projects/daily-tasks
        
       | sprior wrote:
       | Someone proposed the second idea to me once. My immediate thought
       | was of all the careers that would be ended as a result of it
       | being too easy to share that random thought that went through
       | your mind.
        
       | garrickvanburen wrote:
       | "Wouldn't it be cool if" ideas are far less valuable than "here's
       | a daily frustration I have and I've yet to found a satisfactory
       | solution"
        
       | ben_w wrote:
       | "TODO/did do" is also on my, ah, to-do list. And, likewise, has
       | been for years now.
       | 
       | In the meantime, I'm using Apple Notes and copying the result
       | into a Markdown file whenever it gets long enough to start
       | noticeably confusing the Notes.app scroll bar (about once a
       | month).
        
         | jagged-chisel wrote:
         | Geekbot does this on Slack. Granted, it's a standup meeting
         | replacement, not a journal input bot.
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | It seems to me that a particularly formatted Markdown or LaTeX
         | file would be a totally reasonable way to implement TODO/did
         | do. Just have space for "TODO" and space for "did do." What
         | else would an app add? Maybe a reminder (but a phone alarm
         | could be a perfectly decent reminder).
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | Reminders yes, also recurrent tasks.
        
       | belkarx wrote:
       | The clipboard history idea can be done in ... around 5 minutes in
       | Linux (using clipnotify, parcellite, echo, and grep). Ironically
       | this is the project the author claimed would take far longer than
       | 2 hours.
        
         | ivanmontillam wrote:
         | 5 minutes in execution, but more than 2 hours in preparation
         | (knowledge gathering, etc.)
         | 
         | The hidden cost of execution is preparedness.
        
           | belkarx wrote:
           | ... https://gist.github.com/belkarx/299b6d83a85beee2c2559c1b4
           | 2f9...
           | 
           | I will admit that I'm using almost exclusively external tools
           | and had I wrangled the X library myself, this would have
           | taken longer. And while it's technically a working product,
           | it's not exactly polished. But it proves my point. Not a
           | difficult project
        
             | MrManatee wrote:
             | The way I understood [1] is that even a trivial app (such
             | as a clipboard URL logger) will take longer than 2 hours
             | _once you start adding the polish_. I don 't think that can
             | be refuted by writing a 5-minute non-polished version of
             | the app.
             | 
             | [1]
             | https://austinhenley.com/blog/thisprojectwillonlytake.html
        
             | ivanmontillam wrote:
             | Great, I bet you hacked that script in 5 minutes or less,
             | which I don't dispute.
             | 
             | However, you cannot claim that you learned bash scripting
             | within those 5 minutes. Or that you knew in seconds that
             | these were the libraries to use for that little but
             | valuable script.
             | 
             | All costs considered, time to learn what to do is included.
             | So, it was far more than 5 minutes, though your execution
             | was less than that.
             | 
             | This topic is part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System
             | s_development_life_cycle.
        
               | mecsred wrote:
               | Next time anyone asks me for a time estimate on building
               | something, I'm going to hit them with "well its been
               | about 15 years since I started tinkering, so let's start
               | there"
        
               | ivanmontillam wrote:
               | I bill my customers based on value delivered, not on my
               | time exposed to a topic[0].
               | 
               | It could happen that my 15-year tinkering effects in
               | great value delivered.
               | 
               | My point is that time devoted to learning something is
               | not free; you must consider it a business cost.
               | 
               | Regardless of time exposed to the topic at hand, not
               | necessarily a lot of time invested* into something
               | results in a great deal of value to be delivered. You
               | could optimize that time with ultra-learning
               | techniques[1].
               | 
               | The correlation of time exposed to a topic doesn't result
               | in the causation of how much should I charge a customer.
               | 
               | --
               | 
               | [0]: https://www.ivanmontilla.com/blog/does-professional-
               | experien...
               | 
               | [1]: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/ultralearning/
               | 
               | EDIT: * Improved clarity by adding a word.
        
               | belkarx wrote:
               | I don't think time to learn bash or programming intuition
               | can reasonably be included in the timeframe to build a
               | product. It's assumed that time starts _after_ you come
               | up with the idea to do something, and retroactively
               | saying  "this project took me a year" for something you
               | created in a few hours is ... odd.
               | 
               | I agree that the time spent to find the libraries and
               | their documentation should be factored in, so I'd like to
               | note that that part of the process took ... 3 ddg
               | searches (so +a few mins).
               | 
               | ?where does parcellite store clipboard data ->
               | https://www.mankier.com/1/parcellite -> `clipboard -c`
               | 
               | ?regex for url -> https://gist.github.com/securibee/f15f8
               | c7aaa0593cc32fc30f585...
               | 
               | ?get notified when something has been copied to clipboard
               | linux -> https://askubuntu.com/questions/1167026/detect-
               | clipboard-cop... -> https://github.com/cdown/clipnotify
               | -> `while clipnotify;do`
               | 
               | :)
        
               | ivanmontillam wrote:
               | I think we are caught in semantics for this discussion
               | because you are talking about "direct costs" (X causes
               | Y), but I'm defending the idea of "indirect costs" (X
               | doesn't cause Y, but you had it lying around, so you used
               | it).
               | 
               | Using your previous knowledge inventory is not a direct
               | cost of resource usage, but you'd not have been able to
               | craft that script if you had not known about the tools.
        
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