Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to My first programming project – userscripts to change forum UIs
Hi, I'm Will. I'm 24, autistic, and have OCD tendencies. I'm learning to code and this is my first public project. I’d really appreciate your feedback and encouragement! This project lets me solve some of my OCD problems online. There are a couple of parts of the forums that I visit – Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing – that I want to remove. Specifically, I hate seeing indicators of how much is left in a forum thread, because I keep thinking about how much content is left. It stops me from immersing myself in the story. It stressed me out. Before I learned to…
This project consists of userscripts designed to modify the interfaces of three discussion forums: Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing. The scripts remove elements that display thread progress… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. My first programming project – userscripts to change forum UIs launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Once UI 1.5▲302When I started my career and built my first design system, I was beyond excited. It took a lot of iterations, learning and 6 months of work to launch it internally. In the next job, I did it again, then at the following job, again… And no matter which company I worked for, 80% of the design system was the same. I’ve decided to work full-time on the design system I’ve always wanted, and today I’m launching and open-sourcing it. You can use it to build Next.js apps faster, and I’ve designed it in a way that it’s hard to go wrong with it: you can choose any settings, and you’ll end up with a…
Dec 2025 · once-ui.com · its alternatives →
- 2IB
I was somewhat hesitant about sharing this personal projects, especially since I just saw that cool looking Werk[1] tool posted, but I figured that my ADHD-fueled creation might still have it's own place to be. I just finished rewriting the code for a personal tool I use to automate terminal tasks while minimizing the amount of Python/Bash code I have to write. As with all other tools I create for my own use, the guiding principle is simplicity and approachability, as if the tool creates more issues or friction than it solves, I'll get discouraged from using it again. [1]:…
Jun 2026 · 0xff.nu · its alternatives →
- 3IB
Hey all! I wanted to share this project I've been working on that can maybe help you or your developer friends out. I built a RAG system for our product a while back and didn't realize how easy they were to get started. So I put together my learnings into this online course. It's not quite ready but if you sign up and mention HackerNews, I can get you early access. I'm looking to get feedback on the following: (1) materials — is it engaging & did you learn something? (2) UI/UX of the platform — did you have any issues that prevented you from starting or finishing the tutorial? (3)…
2024 · takehomes.com · its alternatives →
- 4HM
I made this as a pair programming exercise with o1-preview. o1 did most of the heavy lifting, through high level prompts, but eventually I needed to diverge from it to get to completion. My initial prompt was: --- I'm making a web app: It's like 4chan, but each thread starts with a gps coordinate. People can only post text and images. I want to build it with flask and sqlalchemy. I want just the backend and data model that supports these threads, anonymous users, and users that can register a permanent username. Write as much of it as you can for me. --- This produced a fully scaffolded…
2024 · mapchan.com · its alternatives →
- 5
My wife and I recently submitted to a mobile game jam on Newgrounds (yes, it's still around). What started as a question of whether we could do it somehow morphed into whether we could do without so many of the seemingly needless complications rampant in our respective industries. My wife thus did all the art as traditional frame-by-frame animation (no puppets or tweening) and I preceded without a game engine. I did use a pre-processor that gives JS a Lisp syntax (Parenscript), because C-syntax is gross. We hope the end result, while definitely of small scope, will serve to inspire some…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6MF
Here is the link: http://www.wikihowtodo.com I know a lot of geeks share the same dream -- build the next kick-ass todo-list/project management system. So do I. However, as I was quite positive that my web development skill is worse than 99% of developers' in this community, I decided to build something simple, useless but unique. So I built this. Basically it's a Wikihow scraper, nothing more. It gives you a place to store interesting Wikihow articles and yes, they are converted into todo lists. I know this site is not that good, but I still need your guys' feedback. For example, as I am a…
2010 · wikihowtodo.com · its alternatives →
- 7IM
I am excited to introduce my solo project, a platform built with the frontend development community in mind. It's an interactive environment aimed at refining debugging skills through exposure to real-world bugs. This project stems from the need for a hands-on, practical method of learning to debug. The site features a variety of intentional bugs for users to solve, mirroring the types of challenges faced in professional settings. Over the coming weeks, I will be adding many more exercises and new features to enhance your learning experience further. Check out CodeMender at…
2024 · codemender.io · its alternatives →
- 8
Over the past three months, I’ve been working with my dad on this app as a way to learn Cursor, shadcn/ui, and Next.js. I’m currently studying UX design at the University of Michigan, and I’ve been really impressed by how much vibe-coding tools have advanced over the last six months. This work journal includes private AI-generated insights with scheduled summaries that can be shared with your team or manager. You can also choose to make a summary public—like I’ve done here for my work on this web app: https://www.workjourney.ai/summary/mkblt2zt-hn2kdbus If anyone has…
Jan 2026 · workjourney.ai · its alternatives →
- 9
Hi HN, I'm one of the engine programmers at All Out Games (https://allout.game/), a multiplayer-first gaming UGC platform where creators can make and play games with their friends. For scripting we wanted our creators to be able to jump in and create game mechanics without having to think about networking. If a developer had to manually send packets to/from client/server to get things to happen then we have failed. It is particularly bad if you are using AI tools because they struggle to keep in mind what code is meant to run where (client, server, or both) and…
Mar 2026 · docs.allout.game · its alternatives →
- 10
Hey HN! I develop browser extensions, I suck at web design, and I've been exploring AI/LLMs. With my new found free-time since dropping work hours, I've developed a Design Copilot browser extension [0]. It does what it says on the tin - you choose a part of your website and the tool gives you instant expert design feedback - "change this font to that, add this much whitespace, use brighter colours .... etc" The tool is completely 100% free to use, its powered by bringing your own AI API Key, and the current LLM it uses is Google Gemini 1.5 Pro. I've yet to hit the free rate-limit and I…
2024 · old.reddit.com · its alternatives →
- 11CS
I started an experimental series, "console.solve", on mini javascript challenges a few months back and received good feedbacks on it. So I created a [second one](https://colintoh.com/console-solve/issue-2?utm_source=colint...) this month. Not sure anyone here will be interested as it's not exactly pro-level stuff. But if you have an hour to spare, it can be a good distraction. For those who are interested, here was the [first challenge](https://colintoh.com/console-solve/issue-1?utm_source=colint...).
2017 · its alternatives →
- 12LA
Hello HN, I am building a devtool to understand existing codebases. The idea originates from my time at big tech as well as various attempts to get involved in open source projects. When I was in college I wanted to improve my coding skills by contributing to opensource projects. I would pickup a bug or feature request but I always found myself stuck at the very first step. I did not understood where and how to begin contributing. I once submitted a patch in firefox which was labeled "Good first issue" but that was still very handheld. The assigner told me exactly which files I need to…
2024 · lucidcode.ai · its alternatives →
- 13
Howdy friends! Tell me if this is an atrociously terrible idea - I've been working on building a leetcode for clientside devs so we can practice React and Javascript interview questions in a more concise way, I call it clientside.dev I just finished a beta version of it yesterday and plan on releasing it with many more problems on Jan 1st but it's there if you wanna play with it open to any ideas / feedback however mean or nice it may be :)
2022 · vacation-call-335691.framer.app · its alternatives →
- 14
So I've been obsessed with a weird question for the past 6 months, what happens to SEO when everyone starts asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of Googling? The answer, apparently, is chaos. And maybe opportunity? I built FirstClick because I noticed something strange. My previous startup was getting zero traffic from AI assistants, but our competitor (objectively worse product, sorry not sorry) was getting mentioned by Claude and Perplexity constantly. It drove me crazy. So I reverse engineered why. Turns out there's a whole new game being played and most founders don't even know it…
Dec 2025 · firstclick.so · its alternatives →
- 15MF
HN, I would appreciate some feedback on my first coding project ever. It's a visual instant search for iTunes (using Apple's API) I consider it MVP at this point, some features are still missing. I've tested the site in Safari, IE, and Firefox, and it seems to work in all of them. http://38069.vs.webtropia.com/tester/test/ (not too fancy of a URL) My background is nowhere near coding or designing (English major in the making, quite sure my code shows) and I only knew some basic PHP going into this last week, so don't be too harsh. Why this idea? I strongly believe visual search will be…
2011 · 38069.vs.webtropia.com · its alternatives →
- 169C
This is my first programming endeavor - a simple meme comic creator inspired by my addiction to a friend's wildly successful site - 9gag.com. More than anything else, as my first project, I learned that I have a LOT more programming to learn. And also, that programming is freaking awesome regardless of my current ineptitude. I built the site using JS/jQuery/HTML/CSS and a dash of PHP (for base64 string to file conversions) and the Bing Image API for image searches (not currently working because Microsoft moved to pay model - boo!) all running on micro Linux instance on AWS. For a few month…
2012 · 9bro.com · its alternatives →
- 171R
I wanted to find a product idea to build. "Build things people want," right? So I thought, why not literally find people saying what they want? I wrote a script to collect thousands of Reddit posts where people are looking for a solution or complaining about a problem. Then I used GPT to filter out the noise and score each one based on how viable the idea seemed. Threw together a simple search interface so anyone can explore them. I was planning to build a more advanced paid version of this, but figured I'd share the raw version first to see if it's actually useful to anyone.
Nov 2025 · search.reddit-business-ideas.workers.dev · its alternatives →
- 18
Hi HN, I've been working on this for a while and it was hard to decide when to stop, either on the way information is presented or when to stop with adding entries. It's not meant as a blog, but rather as a reference that keeps growing. Link: https://thehardparts.dev Currently I've created 4 main section: - Failure Modes: ways project go wrong - Red Flags: early signals that are worth taking seriously - Tech Decisions: common and not so common trade-offs for hard choices - Playbooks - guided approach for situations that repeat I've also focused on creating links between them to…
Apr 2026 · thehardparts.dev · its alternatives →
- 19MF
tl;dr: http://pony-forum.com, forums are in again, baby! Longer version that breaks character limit: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753948 I was abroad earlier last week, so I unfortunately was not there to join in on the discussion of Jeff Atwood’s Discourse[1]. Discourse has received a lot of attention, and revitalizing the forum software of yore is suddenly part of the public conversation. As such, I feel I should bring your attention to my own forever project[2], which has been years in the making from the idea stage. I am not planning on “launching” it any time soon, but the…
2013 · pony-forum.com, · its alternatives →
- 20
This is a completely modified SMF forum. What do you think?
2021 · its alternatives →
- 21MF
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.wtfsoftware.wtfgeneratorfunnypics I submit it as a proof that in 14 days anyone can become a (crappy) programmer :) I'm 32, educated in humanities, I work in a bookstore and in my entire life I have never tried programming. Just a typical user, I knew basic HTML, like adding bold to text etc. Few months ago I started lurking on hackernews, I read about CodeAcademy and decided to learn how to code JavaScript. Fast-forward 14 days: Wow, it's easier than I thought;) Here's my first app. It's written in Javascript and compiled in Appcelerator Titanium.…
2012 · market.android.com · its alternatives →
- 22MC
I'm a big fan of mobile patterns sites like pttrns.com and mobile-patterns.com but neither cover mobile gaming. With oDesk's help and some patience with Tumblr theming, I created mobilegamepatterns.com. What do you think?
2011 · its alternatives →
- 23
I got the idea of [mindmap.so](http://mindmap.so/) out of my own frustration of managing my personal notes in Notion and Miro in parallel. I have built it 3 months back on top of excalidraw, posted it in Reddit a couple of times, and never looked back (was using it only for personal use). Little did I know that the small and nimble tool that I created has crossed 2000+ users (was so surprised when I saw the dashboard last week). It was all organic and word of mouth . Having 2000+ users trusting a product is no easy feat. That’s when I thought may be I should put some more…
2024 · mindmap.so · its alternatives →
- 24IM
Hi HN! Writing has been a big part of my life for the last few years. It's helped me make sense of the world around me through journaling, and my blog and technical books have made wonders for my career as an engineer. Something I've always been missing is an online community where I can practice my skills and learn from other aspiring writers. I built Tavern, hoping to solve my own problem. Its main concept is that every Monday everyone in the app gets asked the same writing prompt and you have seven days to submit your answer. You can look at what others have posted, but only after you've…
2023 · writerstavern.io · its alternatives →
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- Once UI 1.5 alternatives
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- I built a browser-based tutorial for learning RAG for LLMs alternatives
- Hoodmaps Meets 4chan alternatives
- An HTML endless runner under 900 lines without frameworks or libraries alternatives
- My first weekend project, Wikihowtodo, a to-do list maker. alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →