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Comment by parpfish | Hacker News Reader

in the age of LLM-built side projects... what's the right venue for sharing these things with other people?

i feel like the expectations for a "Show HN" project are too high for a passing around a silly little toy that I had the robot throw together. product hunt is for things that are actual products/businesses. so maybe you throw it in a targetted subreddit for a niche interest group?

seems like there should be a marketplace for silly little side-projects, but i'm not sure how you keep it from getting overrun

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Unfortunately, demand for silly little side projects is at an all-time low.

I'm debating whether to share the one I'm working on at all. I made it for myself so maybe it should stay that way.

i really want to see the silly little side projects that everybody is making!

not because i think i'll actually use any of them, but because they could inspire me to do something different in my silly little side projects

the goal isn't "product release", it's elementary school "show and tell"

Usually online communities have dedicated days for such things. Like a "side project Sunday" or such, with one large thread.

HN has that every day, and a dedicated section for it: Show HN. Link in the top bar :)

Yeah, but that's not the same, as most readers will just skip over that. What I said is more similar to HN's monthly "who's hiring" threads or "what are you working on" threads. Like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46937696. I find those much more interesting.

Me too! Maybe it should be called "Slop HN:" :)

Once a month HN user david927 does a "What are you working on?" post (among others: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22What%20are%20you%20working%...) that is perfect for you to drop things like this into as a comment. It looks like this month's is still open for comments though unlikely to generate much interest after the first few days.

It should be made an official HN tradition like whoishiring.

This is actually such a cool idea and such a sweet shout out, thank you :)

Consider Tiny Tool Town? "A place for stupid-delightful tools made with love."

https://www.tinytooltown.com/

There are places like r/sideprojects but as with all non-niche boards it can get crowded pretty fast.

I’ve often thought about standing up a subreddit specifically for side projects but with the proviso of:

- No sign up

- No ads

- No subscription/payments of any kind

Open-source is welcome but optional.

I think the problem with such places is, they just become a dump for self-promotion by people who otherwise don't participate at all. The opposite of an actual community. That's why even reddit used to have a 10-to-1 rule of thumb about posts like that (which would be very easily gamed today).

Yeah, I think you're right. Asking people to give feedback and contribute instead of just self-promoting is like expecting everyone to maintain a 1:1 torrent ratio - it's just not gonna happen.

I shared this tool for remembering recurring tasks on LinkedIn: https://github.com/kristiandupont/balls-in-the-air and it got quite a bit of attention.

No login or signup is required so it's very easy to try out and quite fun to play with, which probably helped. I think the time people are willing to invest in something before getting some sort of reward is approaching sub-second territory.

I marketed my macOS app from here to reddit to LinkedIn, Blusky and only people from Discord bought it.

In theory, you write/vlog about the human side of making it, or lessons learned, or something else that people will find value in related to the thing you make. Over time, maybe a few people start to care.

Ironically, if people care about you, you can pretty much serve up hot buttered shit and get traction.

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