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    Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

    296 points reverseCh | 16 comments | 20 Oct 24 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.917s | source | bottom

    I recently came across the concept of "useless" programs - pieces of code that serve no practical purpose but are fun, creative, or challenging to write. These could be anything from elaborate ASCII art generators to programs that solve imaginary problems. I'm curious to hear about the most interesting or creative "useless" programs the HN community has written. What was your motivation? What unexpected challenges did you face? Did you learn anything valuable from the experience? Some examples to get the ball rolling: 1. A program that prints the lyrics of "99 Bottles of Beer" in binary. A text-based game where you play as a semicolon trying to find its way to the end of a line of code. A script that translates English text into Shakespearean insults. Share your creations, no matter how quirky or impractical. Let's celebrate the joy of coding for coding's sake!
    1. simonsarris ◴[20 Oct 24 16:40 UTC] No.41896595[source]▶
    I like inserting art, like the header to https://simonsarris.com

    A village pops up. There is no point to it. You can click to make more houses. You can right-click to drag things around. When I touch it again I think I'll add a sun and moon that track the time of day for wherever the user is located. Actually the footer has art too, each page has a semi-randomly assigned illustration from public-domain (old) art that I've found. Like drawings from James McNeill Whistler, for instance. I use his illustrations in 'useful' websites too.

    Actually, I experimented with the sun/moon a few years ago, in this version: https://simonsarris.github.io/simeville/

    If you left-click drag the sun downwards, you'll see the moon come up. That one is open source, but the code is quite slapdash compared to the new one. Also you have to click ITS TIME TO BUILD to get the buildings.

    In general I think websites could be a lot more pretty (gorgeous even), silly, interesting, and a lot less corporate chic than they currently are.

    replies(11): >>41897108 #>>41918082 #>>41920706 #>>41922445 #>>41922838 #>>41923268 #>>41923636 #>>41923943 #>>41926720 #>>41927883 #>>41940535 #
    2. sshine ◴[20 Oct 24 17:45 UTC] No.41897108[source]▶
    I like having this kind of animation on my homepage, too.

    Currently I just have an animated GIF background, but I've had some animated ASCII art in the past.

    I'm currently working on animating a fractal drawn with HTML Canvas.

    Your houses and pencil style are very cute, I feel inspired to make something similar.

    I'd like if clicking in the same place would grow whatever's there.

    replies(1): >>41920663 #
    3. laksmanv ◴[22 Oct 24 19:59 UTC] No.41918082[source]▶
    I have to agree, I really miss the 90's when websites had more of a fun artistic creative and personality feel than templated. I see the use for both, but I miss it :)
    4. gazook89 ◴[23 Oct 24 01:22 UTC] No.41920663[source]▶
    For graphics, check out KM Alexander
    replies(2): >>41923413 #>>41923556 #
    5. elevatedastalt ◴[23 Oct 24 01:27 UTC] No.41920706[source]▶
    If the moon is rising when the sun sets, it will be a full moon. But your graphic shows a partial phase :)
    replies(1): >>41923933 #
    6. abc-1 ◴[23 Oct 24 06:41 UTC] No.41922445[source]▶
    Beautiful personal site!
    7. amunozo ◴[23 Oct 24 07:57 UTC] No.41922838[source]▶
    Your webpage is gorgeous, congrats!
    8. BearGrass ◴[23 Oct 24 09:13 UTC] No.41923268[source]▶
    Your website is very cute. I live on a certain floor of a building, and although the content of the site has no meaning to me, I kept looking at it for a long time, as if I were reading a novel.

    Thank you for sharing.

    9. yurishimo ◴[23 Oct 24 09:41 UTC] No.41923413{3}[source]▶
    Im totally using some of these on my next personal site redesign! The charm is fantastic and cozy <3
    10. Halfwhit ◴[23 Oct 24 10:13 UTC] No.41923556{3}[source]▶
    I really went down the rabbit hole reading the history of the map brushes, thanks for sharing!
    11. Uptrenda ◴[23 Oct 24 10:33 UTC] No.41923636[source]▶
    I like this a lot. Beautiful, creative, really quite charming.
    12. dotancohen ◴[23 Oct 24 11:40 UTC] No.41923933[source]▶
    On Earth, with a single Sun.

    But apparently this planet has some very strong radiation protection, possibly synthetic, that blocks out the strong ultraviolet light from their second Sun. That ultraviolet is reflected back in the visible spectrum from the surface of their moon though - thus giving the appearance of a crescent during the entire cycle. The "dark side" is still lit, just lit less.

    That was fun ))

    13. edding4500 ◴[23 Oct 24 11:41 UTC] No.41923943[source]▶
    I love the page. I find it very inspiring :)
    14. propagate97 ◴[23 Oct 24 16:38 UTC] No.41926720[source]▶
    I like it, and I agree with you. Websites follow some simple design rules, some from typesetting, some new especially for the Web. Not least because of the behaviour of base components and the availability of styling libraries that keep their own smell around no matter what one does.

    I like to draw on my websites too. I write a gpu-rendered background for basically any website I make for fun.

    https://gtblank.org

    https://ungut.at

    15. atmosx ◴[23 Oct 24 18:24 UTC] No.41927883[source]▶
    Wow awesome! Reminded me of Cucinelli's AI website: https://www.brunellocucinelli.ai/ which is one of the best one I've seen. It's dedicated to Mr Cucinelli's life and beliefs. The aesthetics are similar.
    16. johtso ◴[24 Oct 24 22:34 UTC] No.41940535[source]▶
    Cute! I wonder how hard it would be, rather than having the houses "bounce" up, to make some kind of CSS animation that would look a bit like they were being sketched, some kind of gradual reveal..