
Ask HN: What project are you most proud of? - tech_crawl_
Been working on some awesome stuff and wanted to see what everyone else has been a part of...
======
patio11
Lifetime: Khan Academy ported some code I wrote; it now runs all of their
internal user engagement metrics.

Recently: Erin and Thomas are still busy putting the finishing touches on
their half of Starfighter, and I'm basically just on client communications
duty, so I gave myself a two-day engineering project as time off for good
behavior.

Certain events which happen when players play Starfighter games are
significant. We want to congratulate players when they happen, ideally in as
close to real-time as possible. Also, since "strike when the iron is hot", if
that player happens to be a job seeker that would be a really good time to do
an introductory phone call if they're willing to do one.

We have heuristics which identify these important events and pipe them into
Slack. The plan was originally "If we see one of the notifications, send them
a person-to-person email."

But if you're playing Starfighter in your browser, you aren't in your email
client, so you might not see the email until e.g. the next day. What we really
want is like Facebook messenger, except inside our own application, hooked up
to Slack, with the ability to be selective about who it is open to.

Enter Apollo, messenger of the gods:

Front-end: React and SockJS Back-end: SockJS-go, some Go glue code, and NSQ
Back-end for Slack: three very trivial endpoints in our main Ruby on Rails
application Interface on Slack: two slash commands and one asynchronous
incoming webhook

How it looks in practice:

In-app message window:
[https://www.evernote.com/l/Aaf2wn2dyxhPDoHAzSYymDcNIasqcmj91...](https://www.evernote.com/l/Aaf2wn2dyxhPDoHAzSYymDcNIasqcmj91McB/image.png)

Slack: [https://www.evernote.com/l/Aadc-
vDMIpxNc7z6XZ1_xH1jMSNOVJ-58...](https://www.evernote.com/l/Aadc-
vDMIpxNc7z6XZ1_xH1jMSNOVJ-580gB/image.png)

Not bad for two days of work. (Starfighter will likely OSS the only hard part
of this, which is the NSQ-to-websocket piece.)

~~~
cpach
Looks really good! Another benefit of this approach is that it will probably
be quite obvious to your users that the messages are not canned.

------
jcuga
I just wrote my first golang library:
[https://github.com/jcuga/golongpoll](https://github.com/jcuga/golongpoll)

I'm proud of it because its a general purpose library (http longpolling)
versus random prototypes that I normally make. Also it has a lot of unit
tests, code comments, and a decent README. I can appreciate the amount of work
it takes to create a polished library for others to use after making one
myself.

------
kleer001
My work on Disney's movie "Enchanted". Went to so many damn meetings and
hardly got to do what I love, but I learned so much about the process and
loads of respect for the leads and higher ups. Also lots of people have seen
it, as opposed to the huge pile of schlock I've worked on that nobody has
seen.

~~~
tech_crawl_
That is really awesome! I am a little jealous that you got to work on that.

~~~
kleer001
Thanks yo! Disney is actually a-okay to work for. I've done a few of their
shows. So, probably best not to say what I'm working on now then ;)

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kiraken
Its really not worth mentioning with all these awesome projects in the
comments, but i created a Pure CSS slider, which i think was away for me to
show people my level in CSS. Plus it got a lot of stars on github haha.
[https://github.com/Elitewares/CSS3-Slider](https://github.com/Elitewares/CSS3-Slider)

~~~
enginnr
Of course it's worth mentioning :) Even small projects are worth posting, like
this recent one by Holman: [https://github.com/tholman/github-
corners](https://github.com/tholman/github-corners)

------
sideproject
Not for anything else, but I'm proud that I have been able to stick through my
current project ([http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)) for more
than 2 years. I used to be very distracted with all sorts of ideas and
abandoned projects.

~~~
raghava
Cool! Any plans to open-source Hellobox core? Do you have a pricing model
already? If I start a community (linked to a custom web domain) and it grows
well over time, who owns the content/data in that community? Can Hellobox
snatch the community or hold it ransom for a price?

I guess unless these are made clear, potential community builders might have
lot of doubts on Hellobox as a platform.

Good work though, the stuff seems pretty neat.

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jxm262
I know it's small and probably not worth mentioning, but I created a bitcoin
exchange's api aggregator (my first Node.js app). Basically it attempts to
wrap multiple exchange's api's into 1 common library, so you don't need to
constantly look up the docs across different companies.

[https://github.com/jxm262/xchange.js](https://github.com/jxm262/xchange.js)

I built another project to analyze prices across the exchanges using the
xchange.js library. Surprisingly both have 13 stars on github :) I'm planning
to add _alot_ more functionality over the next month or so to both projects.

[https://github.com/jxm262/btc-stats](https://github.com/jxm262/btc-stats)

~~~
tech_crawl_
Those are both actually really awesome.

------
NameNickHN
My own project: [http://www.appointmind.com/](http://www.appointmind.com/)
Panasonic and Honda among others use it.

For a client I've built and maintain part of the backends of the largest speed
camera app and data provider in Europe.

------
enginnr
These are my babies currently:

[http://www.jque.re/](http://www.jque.re/)

[https://www.unicod.es/](https://www.unicod.es/)

I could keep making these, but it's do or die with side projects. You either
commit to them with a full heart, or they begin to bit rot.

Currently I just maintain the projects and promote them the only way I know
how (Hackernews and Twitter). There are other outlets for promoting your
projects, but they tend to be very niched and specific.

You can see the Twitter accounts here:

[https://twitter.com/unicodetools](https://twitter.com/unicodetools)

[https://twitter.com/jQueryRepo](https://twitter.com/jQueryRepo)

------
tmaly
I only get about an hour a day to work on it during my commute, but I am
having fun with my side project bestfoodnearme.com I am hoping to have a new
look for it in about a week, more visual, more pictures.

~~~
baobaba
Kudos for finding the time for your side project, even if during a commute.

------
graeme
A book series and website where I explain LSAT practice tests. The LSAT is a
standardized test used for law school admissions. It's an analytical test with
very precise English, and my explanations help people make sense of it.

A significant portion of the material was done in the early years, when I
worked like mad. Now I'm running the business at a more comfortable pace,
though ramping things up to work on a new product for the site.

[http://lsathacks.com/explanations/](http://lsathacks.com/explanations/)

~~~
BorisMelnik
Wow very impressive, looks lie you have 1000's of pages very well organized.
You'll definitely be able to sell this at some point I think.

Any plans to monetize?

~~~
graeme
Thanks! The site already makes money, actually. Plus the books sell in hard
copy. I'm working on other things to sell on the site, because I think that
has more revenue potential than the pdf versions I have on sale currently.

------
collingreen
Once upon a time I made some timelapse software for building videos of
hackathons (ludumdare, specifically). It got pretty good traction and the
quality/quantity of the timelapses in that community went up, which was really
great to see. Now it is fairly obsolete (and so ugly!), but over its lifetime
it saw about 50,000 downloads and helped build timelapse videos for everything
from game dev hackathons to professional car engine builds to medical
research.

------
cesarbs
I'm one of the authors of QuickSynergy:
[https://github.com/cesarbs/quicksynergy-
gtk](https://github.com/cesarbs/quicksynergy-gtk)

I was quite happy to learn recently that it's pretty popular with my wife's
team at Amazon. She had a pleasant surprise when she installed it on her
machine and noticed my name in the About dialog :)

It's due for an update though...

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emilburzo
My Android location sharing app[1], while still barely known, has generated a
lot of great feedback and personal "thank you" emails.

It's barely made any money (40€ in a year or so), but the great feedback makes
it all good.

[1] [https://graticule.link/](https://graticule.link/)

------
japhyr
I just finished writing Python Crash Course, which is coming out this month
from No Starch Press. I'm looking forward to hearing what people think once
it's out.

[http://nostarchpress.com/pythoncrashcourse](http://nostarchpress.com/pythoncrashcourse)

------
zerr
None. I have impostor sindrome.

