rtti
pqm
rtti | pqm | |
---|---|---|
2 | 3 | |
0 | 15 | |
- | - | |
0.0 | 1.3 | |
over 2 years ago | about 1 year ago | |
C | JavaScript | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 only | MIT License |
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rtti
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Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned
Not exactly a fail, but something I expected at least comments: https://github.com/marcodiegomesquita/rtti
- Show HN: RTTI and type-generic user extensible print in C
pqm
- A better/faster JavaScript library for physical math
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Ask HN: Show your failed projects and share a lesson you learned
I made a spreadsheet add-on similar to the pint library for python (dimensional analysis) based on my own open source JS library (https://github.com/GhostWrench/pqm). Website is still up: https://ghostwrench.net/convertplus.html.
To me it seemed like the perfect way to get a solo app up and running because Google was going to run all the sever stuff and I could just cash in. The app never really got off the ground and by the time I realized that Big G really doesn’t want to make it easy for any schmuck to run a profit generating app using their servers and their technology and it wasn’t worth the maintenance effort to keep up with the constant requests to update the app. I think it is no longer available on the GSuite store as of a few months ago. I think my biggest mistakes were as follows:
1) I needed a business/marketing oriented co-founder. I underestimated how difficult that job is and overestimated my ability to do it.
2) I wanted to charge too much for the app. I didn’t want to undersell myself and get caught in a trap of not making enough to keep up with maintenance. I went too far the other way. I think maybe a $50-$60 on time charge would have been appropriate, instead of requiring a subscription. This is an easy fix, but I would had to re-do my marketing effort and see #1
3) Built before I tested the market. I convinced myself that just asking a few of my engineering friend would use it was enough. Again, this is probably a symptom of #1
4) I was mentally unprepared to deal with failure and I lost motivation to keep working on the project when things didn’t go as I expected.
5) I underestimated how much people actually use spreasheet add-ons. There really isn’t a thriving market and most of the really popular apps are a utility attached to another popular standalone project.
6) Probably should have targeted Excel rather than Sheets, because the market is simply bigger.
I think if the stars align, I would like to give this project another go. I don’t think it has totally failed rather than just gone dormant, but I need a better strategy for round 2!
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GNU Units
There are heaps of libraries for all languages because it is a fairly fun and straight forward project. I personally created this one because I was frustrated with how slow and clunky the existing javascript libraries were:
https://github.com/GhostWrench/pqm
Also, I open sourced just the unit database (in JSON format) for anyone interested in making their own version:
https://github.com/GhostWrench/unitdb
What are some alternatives?
boltstream - Boltstream Live Video Streaming Website + Backend
unix-v6 - UNIX 6th Edition Kernel Source Code
lasercrabs - Abandoned hybrid singleplayer/multiplayer shooter project formerly known as DECEIVER
Ruby Units - A unit handling library for ruby
Unitful.jl - Physical quantities with arbitrary units
gnu-units - GNU Units (mirror)
Flythrough.Space - Top down space captain RPG
uom-se - JSR 363 - Implementation for Java SE 8
CardOverflow
unix-history-repo - Continuous Unix commit history from 1970 until today