Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

FWIW, I interpret the question as being strictly about stuff one built for oneself in the context of everyday, day-in, day-out life. Stuff to use yourself. And on that front, I just realized I almost never build anything strictly for myself. I work on Open Source projects and work on projects at Fogbeam that I (want|hope|expect|whatever) other people to use, or things I would use myself in a business context. But I just don't build handy little gadgets to use around the house, or in my truck, or when out and about.

This may be one of the first times I've really felt a strong case of the "imposter syndrome" that one hears so much about. I feel like I should have some answers for this, so why don't I? :-(

OK, to be fair, I did built at least one thing just for myself. I have a couple of lamps that are positioned in an out of the way location in my living room, and I hate having to walk to them and stretch to reach the switch(es). So I did the whole "IP controlled lamp" thing with a relay and an Arduino Nano 33 IoT board. The power strip the lamps are plugged into is controlled by the relay, and I can send an HTTP request to turn the relay on or off. I created a shortcut on my phone's homescreen so I can easily control it from my phone. But that's such a chintzy project I almost feel worse for admitting to it. :p

In my free time I play videogames mostly. I dream of making them myself, but I never have. And I generally don't do cool tech projects like this for myself either.

I made a canvassing app for my friend who was running for mayor of his town once, but yeah.

I barely even have my own github account.

So please don't feel like an imposter. It's ok to treat tech as a day job. :)

For me, most of my mental energy goes into my day job, so I'm often just tired of programming and tech stuff after hours. I tend to have to balance - either put my energy into work work, or work work can suffer while I put my energy into personal projects. I also have family and other hobbies that take up time, and there's only so much of it.

I've also found that if I'm not careful, I'll get too obsessive over this stuff and everything else suffers, so I have to try to keep it in check or I'll end up burned out, more tired, and have half-finished projects - which can be even more mental overhead.

I can admire this right here.

As a priority if you do try to solve problems that you and others share in some way, this has got to be the path toward potentially most widespread utility.

Regardless of whether you are actually on that path, which can be a more elusive yellow brick road than the problems you are skilled at solving.

No matter how cool it is there are probably some things that nobody else ends up using anyway.

There you go, you built it and it turned out to be just for yourself :)

Without any details I respect that as much as the amazing non-business context accomplishments in this topic.

It's fine: you keep doing you and finding your own happiness. Don't feel pressured into matching these folks, nobody expects you to.

HN is full of people with side hustles and hobby computing projects, some of which are pretty interesting.

But it's really OK to do other things after work, especially things that you enjoy.

Even computers are good for a lot of things other than software development. Games, for example. ;-)

Excellent point! It is true for most of the things I build, even though the intent is for the "thing" to see use by others, that the inception was a case of "scratching my own itch." And yes, even if the thing "fails" as something in the global marketplace, I still have the result to continue using for my own itch. :-)