Is there a term for building apps meant for personal use?

I have zero interest in publishing anything I build to an app store. But will gladly share code on Github.

Ideally, I could find others to [1] learn from them and [2] share with them. My hope is a community of self-coders (?) already exists - I just don't know how to find them... Yet

#openSource #iOS #android #development

@ShmosKnows sorry I’m always hounding you @benwerd but you’re the best person I know for these kinds of things!

@ShmosKnows Dogfooding? Although it's mostly for use in pre-production contexts, like quality assurance.

This is (close to) the model I use for my development container and its `upgrade` tool, my custom-built URL shortener, and probably a couple other things I can't remember off the top of my head.

I also have some public-facing apps (Bodacious and LucidLog). I don't use Bodacious a lot because it's buggy especially on Linux, but LucidLog I use all the time.

@ShmosKnows (Sorry for the thread!)

I'm not sure how to best put it although I'm the only one who uses (and is meant to use) the backend parts of the URL shortener. It does have a public-facing component, which is the redirecting bit and links to learn about its backend, but the backend isn't intended for anyone but me to use it.

@blake these are great points!

Are there any communities that builders and what not help each other?

An analogy I'm thinking of is that a maker space building is for physical engineering projects. Is there an equivalent space for coders? A "coder space"? 

@ShmosKnows Plenty of those online, and I think there are some (mostly ecosystem specific) in the real world. In the specific case of building for yourself, there's not much, although the indie web community may be close to what you're looking for.

The final thing to remember is you know yourself best. You alone know the best way to make something for you.

@blake thanks for the gentle reminder, Blake! 🙏🏾

@blake @ShmosKnows

Blake is LucidLog a personal log/journal?

@bayport @ShmosKnows It's intended primarily as a dream journal (thus the "lucid" part of the name), although it could be used as a regular day-journal as well, since most of the basic functionality of both is shared.

Maybe I could have it use the date as a fallback title 🤔

@blake @ShmosKnows
Hey Shaun what kind of personal app did you have in mind?

@bayport @blake food diary. Just want to track calories in a personal "food diary" without authorizing someone access to all my data.

I don't intend to make anything better than what exists - just something that feels private

@ShmosKnows
You might want to look for "self-hosting."

And for health tracking purposes, check out Heedy. It is intended to be run privately and the devs are friendly.

https://github.com/heedy/heedy

GitHub - heedy/heedy: An aggregator for personal metrics, and an extensible analysis engine

An aggregator for personal metrics, and an extensible analysis engine - GitHub - heedy/heedy: An aggregator for personal metrics, and an extensible analysis engine

GitHub
@Nundrum ooohhhhh!!! Thank you! This is getting warmer!