I think many of us have noticed the trend that modern tech just… Doesn’t make things better. There’s little to be excited about, because anything even remotely innovative is going to be filled with tracking, ads, etc.

Let’s say you had a bored software engineer or 2 at your disposal and the goal was to improve something you do often, by creating an application or website that isn’t owned and enshittified by a megacorp looking to extract maximum short term value - what would your project be? Is it something you’d be willing to pay for, maybe with a free tier available?

The reason I’m asking is that I’m a software engineer and in the current hard-ass market, while I’m lucky enough to have a stable job, I know that experience alone isn’t cutting it anymore in the recruitment process. You need to be able to show side projects too. Plus I have an unemployed software engineer friend who also has no interesting projects to show. So if we make any money out of it, that’s awesome. If we don’t, it’s just something for our github accounts. Probably the latter.

PS: Yes, I know this is not a tech community - I want ideas from regular, non-techy people too.

PPS: This doesn’t have to be something in your personal life, it could also be something that would help you at work if you had it.

  • zero_spelled_with_an_ecksEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I play boardgames where there are enough moving parts that replacing some with software improves them tremendously. Gloomhaven and Frosthaven have a bunch of tools for them to help setup, combat, track campaigns, etc., and they help tremendously.

    There is nothing like that for Shadows of Brimstone. For a lot of things, there’s just too much data. I tried to make a script that automated the travel phase after missions which was pick the size of town, determine the number of hazards based on the number of characters and size of town, pick out the hazards, and display each in turn. The amount of text in it was just too much to be worth it. But even being able to replace the scavenge deck, loot deck, and exploration tokens would free up some table space and they’re less than a dozen possible outcomes each with only a small amount of text.

    I’m sure there are other popular games that would be more conducive to having complexity automated. Finding one that won’t send a cease and desist might be a challenge, though.