DEV Community

Adam Crockett 🌀
Adam Crockett 🌀

Posted on

What would you make if you had the time?

For me, I would be interested in writing an app to help people run pop-up shops and market stalls in a way that could sync up to any commerse platform. What would you love to create but will never get around to?

Top comments (19)

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

As I am learning in a university (via online), I would say it is more about energy and brain power, rather than time When I found something too hard for me, I most likely procrastinate forever.

So, I would first learn how to learn, balancing energy, brain power and time. I have already found a potential how-to, actually.

After that, I would learn skills to either start an NGO, or join the government. Also, to recruit people, if needed. Might be about public health or well being. I concern most about equity and accessibility.

After that, I would probably pursue computer science and applied maths, to solve hard problems; and provide a UI for them.

Collapse
 
derekjhopper profile image
Derek Hopper

I was asking myself a similar question for quite awhile. With a young child, I don't have a lot of time so it limits the type of product I can build. So I tried to reverse the question: With the time that I do have, what could I build?

The answer so far is a journaling product. It's simple. Use your phone's text message capabilities to write in a journal. The text messages get saved to the database. Your journal is always in your pocket. It sends you a daily prompt with a different thought provoking question each day.

My hope is it will require minimal support when I launch it. And it's something I can build slowly.

With side projects, it's easy to get into a bad habit of always rushing and pushing yourself to get more done. It took me a long time to realize building at your own pace is an acceptable thing to do. It's amazing what you can build with an hour every day if you're consistent. And if you don't have time to work on your product for a few days, that's fine too.

Collapse
 
shadowphoenix profile image
Rose

If I'd have all the time in the world, I'd dedicate it to learning a lot about how computers work. I'd also use it to master C and Assembly, so I can write my own operating system from scratch! That is actually still a goal of mine, but with the limited time I have, I think it'll take... long, before I even have a little POC up and running. Still, the dream is there, and it doesn't have to be finished tomorrow, which makes it all the more fun.

Collapse
 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀 • Edited

A worthy goal and one we share it seems. Although I'd start with just writing a desktop environment. I kind of did this in JavaScript, it was wired and ambitious so I stopped and did something else. I wish I could write assembly instructions it's like what normal people think of programers, it looks complex, well I think assembly looks complex 😁

Collapse
 
shadowphoenix profile image
Rose

Ghehe, yeah, I wasn't planning on deep diving like a headless chicken... Although it might end up just like that. xD
My plan for now is to master C first, because it is an already low level programming language. Then, I can gradually do projects with it to get a better understanding of how the system works. After that, learning x86 Assembly for bonus torture and making baby steps with the operating system. Starting with something as simple as letting it show "Hello World" or something like that. I haven't thought much more than that, but by the time I am ready for this, it'll a couple years and experience further down the road. ^^

Thread Thread
 
jacob_hudson profile image
Jacob A. Hudson • Edited
Collapse
 
wicked7000 profile image
Wicked

A game engine along with learning the mess of maths that goes with that. I think game development is a really interesting part of computer science due to all the systems it has to deal with. I've got into the basics of OpenGL but would love to invest enough time to create a small game in it with a small engine. Maybe even creating a multiplier game would be cool too!

Collapse
 
perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education

We've been trying to build out this local events application internally for years. (Bad timing now!) - but since we don't have time... we're going to build it as part of our curriculum + let the students all work on it etc. 🤞

We'd also like to build a new computer company - and be an example for creating our own smaller businesses instead of these 360-deal-like walled gardens that Apple, and all the FAANG stuff is doing. If things keep going like this... we'll be doomed.

Collapse
 
n8chz profile image
Lorraine Lee • Edited

Certain types of volunteer work. If I had an enormous amount of time (and some other resources, obviously) to work with I (and hopefully many others) would implement Pubwan, which is to say, amassing large nonproprietary datasets populated and curated by volunteers and placed in the public domain. Salary transparency projects are the most interesting thing I've already seen done. I also have an interest in any type of empirical, actionable economic data, such as transaction data from the retail point of sale, or the big daddy, parsed representations of contractual catches in consumer financial products such as credit cards and insurance policies. Do for data what open source was supposed to do for software. That is my dream, really.

Collapse
 
scrabill profile image
Shannon Crabill • Edited

Furniture or artwork.

I get tired of being on the computer but I like building things.

Collapse
 
mrecho92 profile image
MrEcho92

Same too

Collapse
 
aminmansuri profile image
hidden_dude

Lots of useless little projects that would be of no interest to anyone but me.

Collapse
 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Good on you 😁

Collapse
 
vinit profile image
Vinit Agrawal

I would work on a project which will allow a client program to consume any API in an automated way and without having to look at it's API documentation

Collapse
 
michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

I'm not a dev, but if I had the skills I'd love to make a platform that would give folks the ability to play music online in real time together.

Collapse
 
alxtrnr profile image
Alex Turner

I'd build an app that can display estimated game time remaining for console games and the like.

Collapse
 
frankszendzielarz profile image
Frank Szendzielarz

If I had all the time in the world, I'd focus on computing solutions to modelling and synthesising proteins, to combat age and age related diseases such as cancer, alzheimers etc.

Collapse
 
stereoplegic profile image
Mike Bybee

More time.

Collapse
 
_adrian_e_ profile image
Adrian E.

I would dig deeper in machine learning, iot, arduino, computer vision, web development, app development, cloud development, contribute to open source projects and build a lot of stuff.