Ask HN: Which side project do you plan to do in 2019?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2019 where @jadeydi convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 17 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 15 comments
I'm planning to release at least one app or website per month in 2019. Ideally someone pays me to build their app, but if not, my list of side ideas include:
1. Uber for private tutoring/students. I live in a university town and there's plenty of college kids wanting to teach schoolkids.
2. Random story/character generator based off tropes.
3. Punch card for babysitting, especially for the late night tiers that babysitters are reluctant to charge extra on.
4. Recipe app, focused on instant things like bread makers and pressure cookers.
5. Github but for recipes (this is really just an excuse to make fork puns)
6. A chat with anonymous strangers community, similar to Omegle, except you post something similar to a tweet, and people can chat with you based on it. So you could make a post complaining about your boss, or how happy you are to get a job, then someone can chat with you about it. My main worry is that this could degrade into 4chan and it would be an uphill battle to moderate it.
7. Gamification productivity app. Probably just a checklist, ala Habitica, or it could be integrated with Pomodoro Technique.
If anyone wants to use these ideas, feel free to. Maybe we could even work on something together.
I am planning to venture more into ML/AI (call me jumping into the bandwagon if you want, im not) both theoretically (implementing things myself to understand what is under the hood) and practically. Will try to get at least 2-3 internships or projects in said subject.
Any tips on learning statistics particularly for doing data analysis and understanding ML models?
I am planning to build a spec module for javascript to write effective generative tests https://github.com/vadelabs/backend/tree/master/packages/specs ↗
I am still working on my tutorial set for teaching young kids how to program and do problem solving in Scratch 3
I have been stalled a little with a new baby, but I hope to restart soon.
I want to finish translating https://javascript.info/ ↗ to my native language, Turkish in this case.