Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use?

Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by doodpants on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @04:04PM (#31019587)

Heck yes, all the time. While it seems like the major computer/OS vendors these days are trying to turn computers into limited purpose appliances, I was first exposed to computers as a child in the late 70's, when it was expected that anyone who owned a computer would also want to program it for their own purposes. My own personal projects tend not to be very large in scope, but can be quite handy. Some examples include:

- A Pomodoro timer that has exactly the features and user interface that I want

- A script to perform backups of select files and directories from a source drive to a specified backup volume

- A "pixels-per-inch" calculator that allows me to compare the resolutions of displays that I may be interested in purchasing; by entering the width and height of a display in pixels, and its diagonal in inches, it calculates the density in pixels-per-inch, and the dot pitch in millimeters

- Various user-friendly graphical interfaces to aid in solving different types of puzzles (think sudoku-like logic puzzles)

- Programs to actually solve various types of puzzles all on their own (I've written over 70 of these in the last 10+ years!)

- Various command line scripts for code management tasks (i.e. useful for sofware development itself)

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by mark-r on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @04:33PM (#31019883)

I have a pixels-per-inch calculator too, but mine is an Excel spreadsheet. Lets me see all the displays I've been interested in or own, even things like phones.

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by arprocter on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @05:02PM (#31020221)

For DPI I like this site: https://dpi.lv/

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by slig on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @05:56PM (#31020797)

>- Programs to actually solve various types of puzzles all on their own (I've written over 70 of these in the last 10+ years!)

Cool, are these open source?

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by doodpants on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @07:48PM (#31021740)

No, they're not in any public repo or anything. Besides, if you solve puzzles using a solver you didn't write yourself, it's cheating. :-)

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by shubhxms on Friday April 15, 2022 @02:45AM (#31037227)

Can you at least share a list of the puzzles? :)

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Re:Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal ... by doodpants on Friday April 15, 2022 @06:25PM (#31046666)

Since you asked nicely:

Abstract Painting, Arrows, Battleships, Booty Island, Busy Seas, Castle Bailey, Castle Patrol, Chocolate, Clouds, Consecutives, Crosstown Traffic, Desert Dunes, Digital Battle Ships, Disconnect Four, Farmer, Fence Sentinels, FenceLits, Fillomino, Flower Beds, Free Planks, Fussy Waiter, Futoshiki, Half-Dominoes, Hedgehog, Hidden Clouds, Holiday Island, Inbetween Sumscrapers, Kakurasu, Kakuro, Knightoku, Kropki, Landscaper, Landscapes, Light Battle Ships, Magnets, Mine Ships, Mixed Tatamis, More Or Less, Neighbours, Nonogram, Noughts And Crosses, Number Crossing, Number Crosswords, Number Path, Odds Are Even, Orchards, Over Under, Paint the Nurikabe, Parks, Planks, Ponds And Flowerbeds, Power Grid, Ripple Effect, Robot Crosswords, Robot Fences, Sheep And Wolves, Skydoku, Skyscrapers, SlitherLink, Snail, Snake, Snake-omino, Square 100, Straight And Turn, Sudoku, Sumscrapers, Tatami, Tenner Grid, Tetromino Pegs, The Odd Brick, Trebuchet, Unblock Me (aka Rush Hour), Unreliable Hints, Vexed, Wish Sandwich, Zen Gardens, Zen Landscaper

Most of them are puzzles found in the following iOS apps:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/100-logic-games-time-killers/i...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/100-logic-games-more-puzzles/i...

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