
Ask HN: What tools can I build to make your job/life a little bit easier? - raoof
Hi everybody. I&#x27;ve got lots of free time to write an App but I just have some preconditions<p>1. at least have some users<p>2. it has to be useful<p>3. challenging (optional)<p>4. ambitious (optional)<p>5. make some money through patreon or something (I hope)<p>I have some ideas myself but I don&#x27;t know if they meet my preconditions.<p>1. a visual programming tool&#x2F;environment like Opus Magnum or Factorio<p>2. a timeline widget that each frame count as a state in a State Machine (like in Adobe Flash) and you write your program by adjusting the timeline
   and write code in each frame and you can put the user input as a layer and time travel the whole state of your program like an animation<p>3. turn source code into a State Machine graph where each node is a state of the program and each edge is either a
   user input or time or some condition to make it easier to understand and modify the software.<p>4. transpile natural language to programming language. for example:<p><pre><code>     sort the array [3, 1, 2] in ascending order and name it arr1.

   when we type that the compiler try to find a template that match that sentence for example:

     sort the array $param1:[]Int in ascending order and name it $param2:Symbol

   and there could be many implementation for this sentence in any programming language that we want
</code></pre>
5. I wrote PostgRESTui. it&#x27;s postgrest + static server ( + auto generated admin backend, could be added )<p>6. generate backend for your frontend. for example you write your frontend like this.<p><pre><code>     let productItem = (p) =&gt; `&lt;div&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;&#x2F;product&#x2F;${p.id}&quot;&gt;${p.name}&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;${p.img}&quot;&gt;&lt;&#x2F;div&gt;`
     pages[&quot;^&#x2F;$&quot;] = (req, db) =&gt; `home page ${db.products.map(productItem).join(&quot;&quot;)}`

   and it figures out what you need for your backend.
   </code></pre>
so do you think any of my ideas worth pursuing or do you having some idea of your own
that you don&#x27;t have time to work on but hoping somebody else does. please let me know.
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gitgud
Here's my 2 cents...

    
    
        1. Have some users
        2. Be useful
        3. Be challenging
        4. Be ambitious
        5. Monetizable
    

These requirements are so general that they could literally be applied to any
project. You should narrow these down to actual things you enjoy (for example;
adventure games, language development, embedded systems etc...)

Your ideas; 1, 2 and 3 seem very similar so it looks like you have an interest
in visual programming and language development. You should start there!

> _" 4\. transpile natural language to programming language..."_

This is particularly interesting and could be useful for speech-2-code
programming, for people how are unable to type with their hands ([1] also
discussed here last week)

Finally, it's much harder to stay motivated and make someone else app a
reality. You might as well use your own ideas, anyone of them could be a
fairly popular project leading to new opportunities.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497756)

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softwaredoug
Something that creates a stronger boundary between work and life fore remote
workers. Silo my 'work apps' on my phone/laptop to place friction doing work
between myself and work things.

An example might be having to solve increasingly harder algebra problems to do
work ;)

Conversely, the same friction between work things and fun things during work
hours...

