Could It Be a Spreadsheet?

And other criteria for selecting an idea.

I’m about to select a new project for my spare time and a general trend I notice is too many people make things that I would argue don’t need to exist. The usual CRUD todo list apps, perhaps a game clone, maybe a lighter social media clone etc etc. You already know the ones.

There are only a few tangible reasons to repeat these sorts of projects AND share them in my humble opinion:

1. Ownership of data: You want full control of the solution because you value your privacy and a local only solution is optimal for your needs and perhaps others could find the same utility for themselves. That’s fair, I respect the initiative.
2. You have a unique spin/want a custom workflow: If you can take a todo app and introduce a unique mechanic that is boosting your productivity or can throw in an api call to something else that offers value or tracking, sure no problem. Even tiny “innovations” count for something and get you headed in the right direction and give you a sense of control like “here’s this thing that some company used to do for me , but I made it better for my EXACT needs”.
3. A public record of progress: Fair enough, as long as one acknowledges these are all for learning.
4. You wanna do the hard version: There are some madlads that use existing projects as a way to do a harder version of the “thing” , like using only an old stack, or coding one aspect from the ground up rather than calling a library, etc etc. Props to you and fair enough, lots of learning to be had.

What I can’t personally stand is when something that clearly does not solve a market need in any capacity(not even a variation that may serve a small portion of the initial market) and the gall to put such a product as a paid product or introduce pricing beyond anything that may be necessary for the most core of features to work such as cloud storage etc.

The sorts of questions I ask to filter most of this or to determine the viability of a project:

• Could a spreadsheet do it? (Or a little terminal app even) Quite simply, most superfluous CRUD data could be managed in a spreadsheet (its just that most of us find that tedious so a bunch of pop up companies exist to give a little flavor to entering data into effectively the company “spreadsheet” they have on you). All you really need to jerry rig together is some File IO operations and best practices to manage it or using something like AppScripts that are built into spreadsheet platforms to do virtually any manipulation you might be interested in. Nobody is interested in using your solo price hunter tool when trivago and others do the job just fine, or a row with that 4/5 rating on the last book you read with a link to the notes. I see this all the time with “recipe trackers” or some equivalent as well; brother who are you tryna fool? This coulda been a well formatted google doc with a table of contents with a share link if mama’s chicken pot pie absolutely must be shared with the world. This is all to say, the purpose of the question is: Are you adding complexity and strife in your life that arguably does not need to exist because even the final solution is not objectively solving anything on a practical level. The time it takes to enter a row in a spreadsheet today vs a CRUD app in 4 months from now that you may ultimately ditch anyway in the face of things like Notion? You won but at what cost? Solve your own problem even if the solution exists? sure by all means, but the end result should ultimately at least save CONSIDERABLE time if this solution did not exist otherwise to the point where it would not even make sense to use the competitor product. It should be THAT crystal clear. For me I have to do this because it kinda gives the motivation I need via the idea that what I am making is going to genuinely help me and I’m not making a thing for making a things sake. Those projects always pitter patter out for me cause honestly whats the damn point?
• Are you replicating a paid feature for free? This is an EXCELLENT use of your coding skills in the current economy and get to bang out a product that is small , focused , yet still carries real world value. Certain apps lock certain features behind a paywall, why not just replicate that feature and if its viable give it away for free via a local design (to avoid too many cyber security challenges) or simply straight up undercut your competitor if you can build the full stack out - free market baby, eff em.
• Is it a public service? If your new tool existed , if the right market found your product , would they be going “Oh thank GOD!!” or “ohhhh I was getting ripped off , I never knew that THANK YOU” , if you can create a public service tool , then it doesn’t matter if many people don’t use it, if the right people are thanking you a million for helping them out, the karma reward (and sure sure leveraging it for your resume for you opportunists) is honestly worth it.
• Is the experiment worth running? Sometimes its not for any of those external gains , you simply want to study behavior of a certain thing , this does fall into learning but typically requires other people hence the need for building a fleshed out solution thats comfortable for or building tests that require a working prototype for a larger project down the line

There are soooo many problems to solve, so many unique spins on things for all kinds of demographics that genuinely don’t exist, and you’re going to make the most basic b*tch weather app or ecom store for the 2nd time? (unless you are a freelancer getting paid for it)

Come on fam, life is too short for this behavior.