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Comment by staceyisboss | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wonder if this kind of thing is a complete waste of talent. Smart kids, wasting it on stupid webpages.

The event is one for creative outlets. Even a low-utility project like this that goes viral provides many lessons applicable to more economically-stimulating projects in the future.

I don't disagree with the value of solving serious problems, but this sort of behavior should not in any way be discouraged. I think I would dislike working in that kind of environment!

I mean....if nothing else, we are learning from the experience, but I definitely don't think it's a waste of our time.

But it is because no one will ever even use it.... spend time on something that people will use or that has meaning

I wrote a Hello World program today. No one will ever use it, so must have been a waste of my time. All along I thought I was building experience and learning the language.

You're on the wrong site if you think utility is a factor in choosing a project to work on. The hacker mindset is that a project is worth doing just because it's possible to do it, not necessarily because there's any good reason.

Hellllll yeah....this is exactly the mindset that we need to promote in students to inspire them to hack with passion.

Stacey, we've already had hundreds of people use the site and have received great feedback from many of our users. Sure, it's not something people use every day, but I definitely think it brings some good-hearted humor into people's lives.

Even if it just brings people a few laughs, I'd say that this product has meaning, and that I am proud of it.

If you go on tracing the "meaningful" work you've been doing all this time, you'll probably end up with something leisurely. This is just very close to that, seeming "meaningless".

Let's face it, most of the work we do is an effort to improve and/or increase your leisure time.

Think about it.

And what are you building today? Jesus, what a derisive attitude.

Sometimes it's great to build, just to build. If I was worried about spending every single waking moment of my life in the most productive way possible, I would not even get to live, nor would I sleep very much haha.

As a U-M/MPowered alum, I am very excited about this project as an example of the kind of creative approaches leveraging modern web infrastructure to tap into a newly emerged social behavior. I strongly expect this experience will be applicable to your future activities :-)

Are you joking?

"I am very excited about this project as an example of the kind of creative approaches leveraging modern web infrastructure to tap into a newly emerged social behavior."

Please tell me you are joking... This is a fun useless app. Don't use weasel words to make it look like something it isn't.

Just because something is useless doesn't mean people won't use it. But I agree - this has a use. Not something I'd use or even think to create mind you, but a use nonetheless.

People use it; it is not useless.

It's just a Hackathon. It's meant to just build something for the sake of building it. I made something that lets you stage an internet argument through a Pokemon battle. I don't think I am a "smart kid wasted on a stupid webpage".

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