[HN Gopher] Show HN: My first programming project - userscripts ...
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Show HN: My first programming project - userscripts to change forum
UIs
Hi, I'm Will. I'm 24, autistic, and have OCD tendencies. I'm
learning to code and this is my first public project. I'd really
appreciate your feedback and encouragement! This project lets me
solve some of my OCD problems online. There are a couple of parts
of the forums that I visit - Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity,
and Questionable Questing - that I want to remove. Specifically, I
hate seeing indicators of how much is left in a forum thread,
because I keep thinking about how much content is left. It stops me
from immersing myself in the story. It stressed me out. Before I
learned to code, I'd use my hand to block the total chapter count
so I could read the blurb and see the word count. I would do my
best to ignore the page navigation bar except for the next page
button, but I usually ended up failing. One of the reasons I always
read in full-screen Safari is that I didn't have to see the tab
name that always had the page number. I learned not to hover my
cursor over the window because it would tell me the page number.
This project is a series of userscripts that hide those indicators.
I coded the userscripts in JavaScript, and I used
https://github.com/quoid/userscripts as the system. Despite the
fact I didn't know what a userscript was until I started coding
them, AI assistance allowed me to code them with minimal help from
my brother, Stevie. Khanmigo helped me plan, write, and debug code.
ChatGPT taught me the theory. Part of the reason I coded a lot
faster with the later userscripts is I knew enough to realize when
AI was talking about something irrelevant and redirect it. One cool
moment was when I correctly predicted I didn't need to code
different userscripts for SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity
because Sufficient Velocity used to be part of SpaceBattles. I
find it relaxing not to have to worry about accidentally seeing the
chapter count or the final page number. Maybe they'll help one of
you!
Author : willthereader
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-03-06 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| stevekrouse wrote:
| Great work, Will! (I'm Will's brother and we've been working on
| this project for a while.)
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you.
| edunteman wrote:
| Will and Steve! Great work shipping this, very excited for
| what you build next
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you.
| arjvik wrote:
| This is the best way to get into programming - find something
| that is bugging you and fix it!
|
| I'm also very impressed by how you harnessed AI tools to speed up
| the process - I think you chose just the right workflow to allow
| the AI to augment but not replace you, ensuring that it writes
| good and working code!
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you.
| sigspec wrote:
| If you can't find what you need, make it.
|
| Well done.
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you.
| Vuska wrote:
| 32, late diagnosed autistic. This is how I got into software
| development back in the day. Opera circa 2007 had a feature where
| viewing a page's source also let you edit it and update the page
| live. Neither Firefox or Chrome today have the feature as it
| existed in Opera. The inspector we have today is probably better
| overall though.
|
| The first project I ever completed and shared with others was a
| userstyle that replaced a forum's ugly dithered gif gradients
| with much more modern pngs (`linear-gradient` didn't exist yet).
| willthereader wrote:
| It's interesting to know how software development changed over
| time. I see how modernizing an ugly UI is valuable.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| This is fantastic. This is why I think non-professional
| programmers could (and maybe sometimes should) learn to code - to
| solve little (or larger) problems bugging them.
|
| You might be interested in Emacs, which is an environment for
| manipulating text and creating text-based workflows using a
| pretty nifty language called Emacs Lisp disguised as a text
| editor. ;-) (Full disclosure: I am an author of an Emacs Lisp
| textbook, and a long-time user and fan of Emacs.)
|
| And here is a somewhat famous relevant quote from rms:
|
| > Multics Emacs proved to be a great success--programming new
| editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in
| his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual
| someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't
| say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they
| couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the
| manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned
| to program. (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html)
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you. I agree it's definitely useful to learn enough
| programming to solve personal problems. I'm impressed with how
| user-friendly Multics Emacs is. I think it's cool how you
| single-handedly thwarted Symbolic. It shows your strong moral
| fiber to stand up against them.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Well, not me, of course;-). And Multics Emacs is long dead,
| the only Emacs that is still alive is GNU Emacs (well, XEmacs
| is still developed probably, but not many people use it, I
| guess).
| dimator wrote:
| I'll tell you what, that's an excellent landing page. that level
| of clarity is what many developers struggle with. i know exactly
| what your project does, all in 1 page. kudos to you, and keep at
| it!
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you. I never could have done it without my brother's
| feedback and an essay from dang he shared with me. It's https:/
| /gist.github.com/stevekrouse/22d96b6142fd21a8f9b63500....
| mjhay wrote:
| OCD tendencies can be good when it comes to programming.
| padjo wrote:
| Immediately invoked function expressions! Takes me back to a
| simpler time. Nice work.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| IIFEs still exist!
| markussss wrote:
| I love userscripts, and I'm so happy to see and hear that other
| are using them and developing them. Well done, Will! I hope you
| keep making userscripts!
| willthereader wrote:
| Thank you and I really appreciate userscripts too. While I'm
| taking a break from userscripts to make my website on Val Town,
| I only handled the main problems of my two primary forums. I'm
| sure I'm going to at least make versions of what I have for my
| other forums and new userscripts to improve their forum
| searches.
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