Ask HN: What is your most failed side-project? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your most failed side-project?

8 pointsarisAlexis11 comments

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?

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When 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

I 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.

I 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/

Unfortunately the refresh rates on streetview were too low, as its not designed for this.

Should have built trainerroad

I 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 - if you're on Chrome or even mobile it's pretty slick.

This is amazing!!! I am playing double dragon at work LOL

Hey there - glad you're liking it. Maybe I'll work on it some more, haha.

I 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

Learning 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.

Should I count projects that I'm still working on as failing until proven otherwise?

If so then https://www.earpod.co

No :) Only if you drop it

Looks nice, kudos.

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