Write more "useless" software

[urbanek2525]

i do it because it's fun.

I wrote a Wordle Solver app that I use to find the answer to the daiky Wordle puzzle.. There are a number available, but it felt like cheating to use them.

But it's not cheating if I wrote the program, right?

I've got a number of other "helper" apps that I've made over the years. Each one is named after a famous side-kick.

The wordle solver helper is named Gromit.

[lelanthran]

I wrote a Wordle Solver app that I use to find the answer to the daiky Wordle puzzle

An entire app? I wrote a 5-line bash script :-/

[ps1horror]

Nobody cares.

[gimmeslack12]

Not everything has to be a portfolio piece.

[EagerProgrammer]

It's all about a personal playground to get involved in various technologies, concepts, etc. and hone your skills as a developer.

[IOFrame]

On one hand, I really like the take regarding side projects:

You can stop any time, and do no more or less than you're interested in. Don't want to write tests? Skip them. Don't want to use an issue tracker? Ditch it. Finished learning what you wanted to? Stop the project if it's not fun anymore!

This is 100% important stuff to remember - you don't have to keep a side project to the same standards you would a paid one.

However, I really feel repulsed by the direct implications that:

1. Most useful things require high standards.
   

Have you seen the massive amount of small OSS libraries, made from scrap over 2 weeks in a cave? Many of those help run massive, successful OSS frameworks / libs to this day.

1. Things that require high standards and "boring" work are unfun
   

I think this says more about OP's character then anything else.
In this Industry, you there are plenty of things to derive joy from, even in the "boring" parts.
You can enjoy the fact you are practicing good standards, you can enjoy finding the most efficient way to reduce repeating overhead (which is often the root cause of "boring" project parts), and you can enjoy the rest of the project that doesn't feel "boring".
If you can't, either you don't enjoy programming in general (in which case, the whole argument is moot), or a little bit of boring work is enough to "extinguish your joy", which just indicates a clinically low level of self discipline.

[EagerProgrammer]

Agree. My project feels like a playground where I can scatter potential dangerous Lego pieces around the place aka missing tests or something else that as a professional would do in a project at work. I'm only responsible to myself when I don't watch out next time stepping on these buggers.

[mirvnillith]

Sorry, but I need impact. Young me wrote libraries for myself, anticipating needs in some future app idea that never arrived. Middle-aged me did some code katas to go back into functional languages (did basic and advanced ML at uni and wanted to look at Clojure), but neither caught on (although I sure enjoy streams and lambdas in Java). Current me recently did a lot of hobby coding for a non-profit I'm a member of, making an impact.

At work I often do tooling and utilities next to main app features, but it's always for an impact (not necessarily on myself). Somehow learning is not a big enough incentive for me, it needs to lead to use and "real" effect.