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

296 points reverseCh | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.217s | source

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!
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refactorerer ◴[23 Oct 24 09:51 UTC] No.41923464[source]▶
I made a todo app in a mixed up tech stack (nextjs Backend, Go Frontend, Postgres in the browser): https://github.com/refactorerer/least-toxic-todo-2024

I was probably furious about web development again, so I thought maybe it's fun to do something completely crappy and broken by design on purpose.

It was really fun to do, but I also wanted to challenge myself in writing about it. I do not think that this satire project/article did a lot to improve my writing, but hey at least I did it and finished it. I do think however that it could have become much funnier had I put a little more effort into it. Also tried to get it out there by making an X account and engage with the htmx guy, but I learned that my X game is too weak and I gave it up afterwards.

I definitely want to do some project like this again, I like the idea of doing something useless and/or plain wrong.

replies(1): >>41923507 #
1. hi_hi ◴[23 Oct 24 10:01 UTC] No.41923507[source]▶
Bravo! I love the principle you approached this with, and would like to see more examples of these anti best practice projects that still work (all-be-it in a limited context). Tech should be fun, and as my old man use to say "there is more than one way to skin a cat". Keep it up.