Ask HN: What would you work on, if you had enough free time? - manx
======
malloreon
As phrased, this is a nebulous question.

If I had 'enough' free time, I'd find a way to make people pay the costs of
their actions or choices, regardless of where they land in the social/economic
hierarchy.

Too many people who do bad things get away with them, and too few who do good
are rewarded.

~~~
ilovetux
This is a concerning comment. Are you thinking about doing anything which may
cause harm to yourself or others?

Sorry if that sounds cliche or something but if you find yourself _overly_
concerned with retribution then any action you take is likely to cause more
harm to yourself and your loved ones than anyone from which you extract
retribution.

Please feel free to discuss this with someone you trust or failing that I'm
here.

~~~
ilovetux
After your update, this comment feels out-of-place, but (while I contemplated
deleting it) I feel like I should leave it here...just in case.

------
wallflower
Learning as many languages to B2 level as possible and maintaining that level
as needed. B2 is the level where you "can interact with a degree of fluency
and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite
possible without strain for either party." [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels)

~~~
throw_this_one
Yup, same here. Although this is definitely something you can do in your free
time. I find too, that there is a cap to the number of hours or minutes you
can spend working on a language per day. Kind of like working out a muscle. Of
course, actually being in the country you will go past this limit out of
necessity and still thrive.

------
muzani
I still want to do a story generator. Something that just creates a world,
creates characters, creates stories between them. And from all this generates
history.

Possibly with a little guidance and balancing from a human input. I'm thinking
they would be useful as an assistant GM in tabletop games. Just randomly
generate a character on the fly, based on existing information, but it won't
be as visionary as a human would.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Sounds like you should try Dwarf Fortress!

~~~
muzani
Too complex. It builds worlds well but takes too long to build stories.

------
peterkelly
Write a native Slack client for OS X which has identical functionality to the
official version but doesn't chew through CPU cycles like they're going out of
fashion. I would call it "Slick".

~~~
wallflower
Please do this! I believe there are probably undocumented APIs though.

------
NickM
I’d start with studying more math. So many other interesting doors open up as
a result of better math skills. Plus it’s just gratifying for its own sake;
feels like getting a deeper glimpse into the structure of the universe....

------
valgor
Scientific publishing has a deep problem right now with papers being published
with data, algorithms, and/or code being proprietary. In addition but not
always related, there is the problem of reproducing results in papers. From
bad data to crafting results to have p be under 5% causes headaches for
scientists and in general creates an ecosystem of bad science.

If I had enough time, I'd like to do two things:

1) Create a third party rating system where we attempt to rate the quality of
the paper based on openness, reproducibility, who funded the research, data
quality, etc. The hope is that researchers will not look for papers in their
favorite journals, but refine their search to only quality papers.

2) In a similar vain to the above, have a company that does nothing but tries
to reproduce experiments in papers. I think this would be a ton of fun and
provide great value to the world. Where funding would come from however is
unknown...

~~~
LyndsySimon
Are you familiar with the Center for Open Science?
[http://cos.io](http://cos.io)

~~~
valgor
Nope, but now I'm interested. Thanks!

~~~
LyndsySimon
No problem.

I was a very early employee (first dev hire) and still keep up with a lot of
the employees and alumni. Let me know if I can answer any questions :)

------
finaliteration
I’d love to work professionally doing music production, composition, and sound
engineering, especially for films and video games. I also like doing music
transcription and transposition because I have a decent ear and use it to
learn a lot of the music that I play (ps I’m a classically trained pianist of
over 20 years).

Personally, I’d like to be in better shape. I’m not in horrible shape but I
definitely do not have the time currently to undertake any sort of consistent
exercise routine.

~~~
mygo
you don’t have 40 minutes a day for 3 days out of the week? That’s all the
exercise-time it takes to get in great “athletic” shape. With visible results
in only a few months to half a year (you may or may not be where you want to
be at that time, but you will see results and progress in the mirror)

the rest is nutrition.

~~~
finaliteration
I commute an hour both ways, work 9-10 hours, and have a young child who has
sports on the weekends. I also have a spouse with whom I would like to spend
time. I also need to eat and sleep.

So, no, currently I don’t have that time available.

~~~
mygo
your situation is not all that different from many others who are making it
right now.

One hack that’s very popular is waking up, eating a quick high-energy snack
such as a banana (would be enough energy to get through a 40 minute workout),
and then taking a shower in the gym (and putting on your work clothes there)
instead of at home. You can keep a locker to make it a very comfortable
process.

There’s a few other adjustments that make a big difference if it’s something
you want to accomplish, but I’d have to know more about you. But the main
message is that it’s doable, your situation is really not as unique or
limiting as you think it may be, and many others in your situation are doing
it, without killing themselves in the process.

------
ahsueme
Systematize online business creation. For example, if you have an idea for a
product, it helps you raise money, develop prototypes, find manufacturer,
build ecommerce site, do fulfillment, and online marketing.

Similar for sass.

------
sztanko
I would continue working on my pet project, [http://walks.io](http://walks.io)

~~~
wtvanhest
What city is this gor? London?

------
antjanus
I've been trying to work on this for years but never had enough time and
always lost steam. So here goes:

I want to build a markdown editor that's built for writer powerusers. My idea
was that it'd function as a "writing IDE" with some of the following features:

1\. storing metadata about a markdown file using the MOML[1] format

2\. ability to quickly search through an entire project (a book, blog posts
for a site, etc.)

3\. plugin support (such as for spell-checking, grammar-checking)

4\. auto-detecting character/scene/location names and linking them together
(eg. if a character named "John" shows up, you can hover over them to see
other places they're at)

5\. robust project structure -- ability to separate story from research from
character/location descriptions

6\. export using pandoc into epub/mobi/html/whatever format

7\. despite all the features -- it's all plain markdown so you can sync it via
dropbox/drive/onedrive/git

8\. ability to run specific commands on the text you're editing. Similar to
how in VS Code you can run format or other commands on the current code file.

9\. clean/empty interface

10\. autosave to temp location in case of a crash

I've already started on this and have a functional version of it called
OMEN[2] and have a simple design up on my blog [3].

And yeah...I wrote half a book on my OMEN prototype. I had to switch when I
realized that I didn't have autosave...and didn't have the Ctrl+S shortcut
implemented yet.

[1] [https://github.com/AntJanus/MOML](https://github.com/AntJanus/MOML) [2]
[https://github.com/AntJanus/omen](https://github.com/AntJanus/omen) [3]
[https://antjanus.com/blog/dev-updates/dev-
update-1/](https://antjanus.com/blog/dev-updates/dev-update-1/)

My other project would be a game I've been designing for a while. It's like
Diablo I mixed with Stardew Valley. Eg. your objective is to crawl through a
dungeon but it's not as serious/dark and has a crafting/home aspect to it.
I've worked up a game design, character design, etc. just never had time to
build it.

------
farazy
If I had enough time, I would start a software design company focusing
primarily on disabilities. All the current accessibility features are
afterthoughts.

~~~
mig4ng
My thoughts were similar, make tutorials/guides on how to make the web easy to
use by those who have disabilities.

------
theprotocol
Honestly? Pretty much everything. And thus in effect I get nothing done in my
current level of free time as I'm jumping back and forth between dozens of fun
projects.

I'm aware this may not be a satisfying answer, but it's the truth, for better
or for worse.

~~~
mickronome
It's satisfying for me, it's an honest answer, and as good as any other.

With enough free time there wouldn't be much need for a direction. And after a
while I would probably figure out something I liked doing more than other
things.

Only issue is that in my eyes, enough is probably pretty close to immortality.
Largely because I would like to understand the breathd of the human condition,
and how language makes us think differently. That probably requires getting to
native speaking ability in maybe 100’s of languages, and also the patience to
wait for the likely needed cognitive augmentation to be able to do that.

I would also very much like to visit a few stars and nebulae, which could take
a while.

If I only had a couple of decades or so, I might take a stab at building tools
to make programming the job it should be, but isn't now.

------
lcall
Definitely this (AGPL): I heavily use a tool I've mentioned before, which I
wrote (after trying org-mode, collapsible outlines in other tools, etc). It
uses postgres, and I hope that "sharing" data exchange features are coming
(though it already does export to org-mode-like text, and to html). Best code
is that in github, though a downloadable .jar is available. Currently keyboard
and desktop-only (text-oriented). The most efficient/effective thing I have
found for notes/lists/details of all kinds, and should be easy to learn to
use, as all the essentials are on the screen. There is a tutorial.

[updated, to add:] Part of the eventual purpose of the tool is to help
individuals and mentors via maturity models that apply more generally to life
before getting into any particular topic. That could easily be misunderstood,
and there is more about that at the web site (below). Part of the idea is to
help in the development/growth of self and others -- skills, knowledge,
positive character traits, anything good -- in any area of life that one
chooses, so we can have good goals instead of trying to make life seem
fulfilling with empty searching for more pleasure/power/attention.

By marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or
personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to
"yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).

[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org)

Feedback welcome. Thanks.

------
swiley
I do a lot of music right now, because I feel like I have a whole separate
emotional energy reserve for that.

If I had more free time though I’d like to think I would work more on the
browser I’ve been writing along with other small side projects (d&d charecter
sheet validator, open street map renderer etc.) and maybe try to teach myself
more math.

I’d also spend more time at art museums and hanging out with my friends though
which I’d argue is at least equally important but probably more important.

------
anotheryou
\- A social news aggregator avoiding machine learning and democracy/main-
stream. Like a better twitter, but focusing on links.

\- finally learn data science (and more python along with it)

------
grahamburger
Oh man, so much. This side project that has been perpetually at the back of my
mind [1], spend more time biking and kayaking w/ the kids, maybe take up FPV
drone racing.

[1]
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQw1TPPvVvMu3Lee...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQw1TPPvVvMu3LeepYOrAArZ_TjvOXi20rLQcgY6yUGaEcrY4pFm_B8AsblNx8GnIuntS5v6m9-og4C/pub)

~~~
refrigerator
Love this idea. I think the next level would be to pool together different
people's uncommonly used items (e.g. camping tent) to let other people in
their community "borrow" them.

What's stopping you from working on this, just out of interest?

~~~
grahamburger
Hey thanks! I like it too because it's something I would definitely use. In
the little bit of market research I've done (basically just asking a few
friends on Facebook) the response has been "it looks cool and I'm sure someone
would use it but I wouldn't because (it's too expensive|I already have plenty
of storage in my house|etc.)" Seems strange to me because I would totally use
it if it existed. But between other projects and a regular job and the
lackluster response I got from friends I haven't been able to justify spending
time on it.

------
rohan1024
I don't know if this is even possible but before I dive into what I would like
to explain why(Read next para if you want to read what):

A large number of engineers today at least in India are writing the same CRUD
applications again and again. I can't believe we haven't reach a level of
abstraction where people who needs these app are able to design themselves.
This would save tonne of man hours. I have seen so many companies implementing
the same employee management, payroll systems, sometimes their own internal
social networks. Heck, some are implementing their own email clients because
the companies who are selling email services charge a lot. If only we had open
source alternatives to these system as that of the grade of Linux kernel, a
large number of engineers can start working on more pressing issues.

So I would like to build open source alternative to the systems like employee
management, payroll management, student management, hospital management, email
services, hotel management,etc. Anyone who wants variations in their system
can tweak it making small code changes. Ultimately hoping to reach a level of
abstraction where we won't need engineers to code every small business case.

~~~
murukesh_s
It is possible. It came under various avatars called FoxPro, Visual Basic etc,
but did not survive post web / web 2.0 era.

------
lee101
I have a few AI/ML pet projects and games
[http://wordsmashing.com](http://wordsmashing.com)
[http://bigmultiplayerchess.com](http://bigmultiplayerchess.com)
[http://multiplicationmaster.com](http://multiplicationmaster.com)

I have one project predicting cryptocurrency prices which makes money
[https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz), the games have no ads/attempt to
charge and are more a labour of love :D

given more time i would venture into higher end 3D games and AI's, i also like
to make things educational so i would love to make something biologically
accurate, there are so many complex systems in real world biology that would
make great games e.g for example a game centred around the life of one of
these animals: meercat, beaver, bug/spider, ants.... the list goes on :D

------
pimmen
I would start a business focusing on one of the things I really care about;
education for special needs children and bullying. I don't believe in the
whole "reinvent everything" stuff that most tech founders proclaim, I would
look into working together with people who already work on these issues and
see if there's something I could do to innovate on 5% of the process to make
it more efficient.

I had a very tough time as a kid because of mild autism, my baby sister has it
even worse. I never got much of the help I needed as a child and felt very
miserable. My hometown and my parents are much richer today and my sister has
gotten a lot of help but I still feel there has to be something one can do to
make this better. I was fortunate in discovering my love of math as an adult,
and the perseverance to become an engineer, most people weren't as fortunate.
I feel an obligation to help the children with special needs in schools today
to make them feel safer, respected and empowered in a way childhood me never
did.

------
fillskills
I will plant trees every day and find ways to encourage every human to do so.
Save the planet for the next generations

------
ThinkingGuy
I'd love to contribute to some free software projects, but I'm not a coder,
and doubt I could ever get my coding and debugging skills up to the necessary
level, even with intensive study.

I do enjoy contributing to some of my favorite crowdsourcing efforts, though,
so I'd spend a lot more time on all of them if I could:

-Contributing to OpenStreetMap (especially when I travel to less well-covered parts of the world)

-Distributed Proofreaders (proofreading scanned books for Project Gutenberg - [https://www.pgdp.net/c/](https://www.pgdp.net/c/))

-Support the Debian project by finding some software to package and maintain- [https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned.en.html](https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned.en.html)

~~~
ilovetux
Code is far from the only way to contribute. Documentation (read good
technical writing) is what is missing in most good, lesser known open source
projects. Most projects I have seen are almost overly-welcoming of good
contributions to their documentation.

------
winrid
Well, you can't make more time. You can only make time for what is important
to you. I've done that (working full time, starting a business,
girlfriend...). I'm trying to get into being a backend engineer for MMOs so
I'm starting my own projects which I plan to also live off of while I search
for a job that will help me change my career path (currently in enterprise
Developmemt). Also, if I'm financially independent I have the luxury of
working for fun.

You should ask yourself what your goals are and what you should STOP doing.

One thing I enjoyed doing was building/repairing my race cars but it just
didn't align with my goals anymore - so I have someone do it (for now).

~~~
juice_bus
Where did you start for exploring being a backend engineer for MMOs?

~~~
winrid
I'm already a full stack guy and have led both FE and BE engineers. I had just
never built stuff myself that scaled this way. I just picked a small project
and will learn from that to build a bigger one and so on.

------
pixelmonkey
Really technically advanced open source projects at the intersection of
Python, C, and operating systems. For example, today, I'd probably work on
Apache Arrow or a C-optimized Parquet implementation for Python. I just love
that kind of stuff.

------
yoricm
\- Watch all korean & Japanese drama & anime & US TV series that get 8/10
rating or higher (It would take 50 years if I spent two hours every day
devoted for it)

\- Read all the books I'm interested in (I get depressed thinking I won't ever
have enough time to read them all, even if I stopped working for the rest of
my life)

\- Watch all the youtube channel I'm following

\- Learn how to play the piano smoothly.

\- Put everything I read and watched into application in my own life. What's
the heck to keep theories in your head if you don't put them into practice ?

------
chrismatheson
Find an alternative approach to selling software, the benefits of managed
software that SaaS offers but with the ease of use of adding a library to your
code. No syncing data back and forth in order to really get the benifit

~~~
chrismatheson
This or possibly a projec that would attempt to find an common Set of AST
definitions that could be serialised & deserialised into most of the common
languages, then store source code in this definition rather than any one
language, allowing the “same” program to be shown as C#, or java, or F# or
python or javascript ... even maybe individual functions... the syntax
essentially just becoming a display preference, but the tooling (source
control & diffing & static analysis etc) would all work at the AST level

~~~
mayank
Not exactly what you’re suggesting, but look at LLVM IR.

------
SenHeng
I would work on making regular space travel a reality for everyone, anyone.

------
hprotagonist
my relationships, my body, and a variety of hobby projects i’ve been meaning
to take care of for years.

i need a vacation, i think.

------
ilovetux
I want to design a framework for building web apps which uses up, down, right,
left, space (as yes) and esc (as no) as the primary input mechanisms. The way
I envision it would look a lot like the UIs the you see in console game
systems. If this was coupled with a USB gamepad with a slide-out keyboard it
would be even better.

If this existed, the first thing I would create with it would be a data
analysis product along the lines of splunk or elk.

I cannot quite put it into words but the picture that I have in my mind would
help me so much day-to-day.

------
__sr__
Advanced Physics Research. Or an OS for the 21st century which discards the
warts accumulated by the mainstream ones over the decades — which they refuse
to discard for backwards compatibility.

------
curlcntr
I enjoy combining piano and computer programming and have so many musical
composition and animation ideas but they are all fragments of completion. For
the past year I've been trying to finish some and put on youtube but would
enjoy doing more. Then I might actually improve too!

By chance I just put one up this morning

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXECreEgcmU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXECreEgcmU)

------
murukesh_s
I would build a self-programming software to build software.

~~~
firethief
So if you had enough time, you would end the Anthropocene? That's intense. I
hope you get the time though; it's about time we accept our future!

------
Silixon
The theory of chemistry from the perspective of information theory. Since we
can equate energy and information and since chemical reactions are largely
governed by energy landscapes and (quantum) thermodynamics, we should be able
to reformulate the energy theories into information theories. Sometimes a
change of variables or parameters introduces a more convenient representation
for discovering new phenomena.

------
lylecubed
Either a new OS for power users that "just works" or a replacement for the web
(a ground-up rewrite of web servers, browsers and protocols).

------
loteck
I've organized a group of technologists who are interested in working in our
local community to improve understanding of how technology is used or misused
in the public sphere. It was my answer to all the times I had to ask "what can
I do to help stop this problem/help this effort?"

But it's a side thing and it could be a lot more effective if I could spend
more time on it.

------
hdpq
I'd spend time learning AI/ML stuff.

------
moron4hire
I'd be working on much of the same VR/AR stuff that I'm currently working on,
but I'd also be out giving talks and I wouldn't be wasting time on corporate
compliance training modules.

More specifically, I'd like to build a VR development environment with built-
in teleconferencing: a virtual office.

------
rectangletangle
I took a sabbatical recently and explored a bunch of interesting areas of NLP,
which culminated in [https://www.alphanym.com/](https://www.alphanym.com/)

If I had infinite free time, I'd just continue exploring the wonders of
computational linguistics.

------
akudha
Some form of communal space, completely (or almost completely) free for people
to stay for a while and work on whatever they want (software, books, videos
etc). Food, stay, internet etc will be free, with the understanding that they
give away their work for free.

------
fenwick67
I think I would just dig in deeper on my existing hobbies, nothing terribly
revelatory.

------
na85
IRC with federated login and support baked in for roaming with multi-device
sync.

~~~
grahamburger
What do you think of Matrix?

~~~
na85
I think it's over-engineered.

------
jacobmarble
Finally get that private pilot license. Spend more time with my kids.

------
j45
Education Technology.

The question above doesn't addresses when the problems are large enough that
one person's free time alone can't solve.. But maybe effect to some small
degree.

------
HellDunkel
Retro graphics adventure

------
farazy
If I had enough time, I'd start a software design company with focus on
disabled people. All the accessibility features today are afterthoughts.

------
louwhopley
One thing I'd work on is open-source tech that can help poor rural families &
schools get access to distributed electricity, internet, etc.

------
user1324345
NLP bots to influence political issues on the internet

------
presty
Cryptocurrency projects.

------
IshKebab
A simple EDA program that doesn't suck (yes, geda, kicad and especially Eagle
all suck in various ways).

------
wildengineer
A football analytics website that I have been slowly building for years and
learning ML.

------
qaq
Database system (for fun)

------
qop
Minikanren, ckanren studying, game development, my own ssh client, my own DHT
implementation

All sorts of shit. There's so little time for anything anymore. I'm
considering retiring a few years early to get some hacking done.

------
mabynogy
A distributed OS made for programmers.

