"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You know when you bang your elbow ('funny bone'), it bloody hurts like hell for a second or two, then it's gone. But if you just get a little thorn in you, or a splinter of metal maybe, it niggles away at you. My depression - possibly what some would call malaise in the past - is the latter. Suicidal ideation, for example, doesn't stop you working completely.

I've just got over a couple weeks of a viral infection (not Covid19 according to tests) and just felt yesterday -- oh wow, I actually feel happy. I've been intellectually 'happy' (by which I mean that on analysis there's nothing for me to be especially down about; at least something to take joy in) many times in the last few years (my depressive period) but very rarely have I felt physically in that state.

It's one thing to be alive, another to feel alive.

Depression does not make a person completely incapable in every way, at least not usually.

This comment comes off as belittling someone else's depression, and I'm afraid it might be very hurtful to the author.

I'm not hurt at all by this comment and it's true. I didn't create the app in the depths of my most intense depression episode (two months in bed, couldn't even get myself to watch a TV show). Medication helped me out of that. I've also actively working on methods to improve myself for about a decade and by the time I started working on the app about two years ago I was mostly stable with occasional bouts of depression and rage that lasted for a few days to a week.

The first version of the app took a couple of weeks to build and I was flying on a good streak at that point, but it's prevented me from spiraling down ever since.

I don't know if the app could have helped me in my deepest depressive state. I don't know if it can help other people in even deeper states. I think it might.

This is a really hurtful and dangerous line of thinking. Imagine if you went to a Doctor and they said "you came to me to fix the problem, therefore you must not be sick".

This implies to be depressed you MUST be the worst form of depressed, or nearly suicidal to be deserving of help.