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Comment by hamaluik | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately because I wanted an app.

* I make enough web-based things for my job, and I enjoy developing in Flutter / Dart (what this was built in).

* I’m never realistically going to be looking through names on a desktop; I use the app when I have a few minutes to kill in line or something where I can pull out my phone, decide on a few names, and then go back to what I was doing. I could build it as an offline web-app that gets saved to my device but then why not just build an app in the first place?

* I like using SQL for retrieving data, and I don’t want to have to jump through hoops to do so.

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Projects like this one are excellent for scratching an itch or learning a new platform. Low-pressure / "oh well" failure mode, fairly constrained scope, nothing too fancy, but enough of a "product" with utility to push you through the boring parts to the end.

It's also interesting how this question shifted over time! It used to be that people would ask why you made a Perl CGI or PHP app when you could've just made a desktop app.

ps: congrats on the new baby!

Exactly! The development actually languished for many months and I almost scrapped it. Only in the past week or two did I decide to revive it when I once again felt the need for it (9 months go by fast).

Thanks!

9 months go by fast

For the father at least...

Congrats!

Might be nice to deploy the Flutter app on the web too. Flutter web support is pretty decent now. SQLite on the web is probably going to be tricky though (sqflite doesn't support it).

> I use the app when I have a few minutes to kill in line

You could track whether specific locations, or time of day/week, result in liking certain types of names. Version 2.

It's a baby name generator, there's no need to track everything!

You're not thinking of the potential here. Just imagine a baby name generator that tracks its users preferences and automatically registers domains and social media accounts which it then tries to sell you.

...it sounds horrific, I'm glad OP went with this model.

They could also stand with their decision, to stick it to all the user apps, that track you to oblivion ;)

It is possible to collect information, use it locally, and not upload it to a server.

of what relevance would such data be to the user who generated it?

curiosity!

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