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Comment on Ask HN: Publish old projects even though the source code embarrasses you by now?

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I just published the source code for the first app I ever built, all the way back in 2003: https://github.com/aaronbrethorst/irooster

It "turns your Mac into a $2,000 alarm clock."

I originally made it because I had endless amounts of trouble waking up for my morning classes in college, and found that the only alarm that could get me up was a subwoofer right underneath my bed. So I hooked a 2.1 speaker system up to my Mac, wrote a little app to start playing an iTunes playlist at a particular time, and ended up productizing it.

It was never a huge commercial success; I think the best I ever did with it was about $2,000 in sales one month after Apple featured it in a newsletter (different times!), but it taught me several important lessons about building a commercial software product that still guide me today.

Enjoy checking out my super janky code!

Back when I was in college me and a few classmates put together a site where you could share files with others using a link. Looking back at it, there are so many issues with the code, from just about every perspective. Up until recently i still kept it as an item on my resume, described something like "my first web app project, preserved with all it's bad code and questionable practices".

https://github.com/sgolovine/transmit

I realize that this may not be in the spirit of the question being asked, but could this not be done with the following?

   0 6 * * 1-5 open /path/to/bangin/tunes.mp3
I'm all about reinventing the wheel, but that's a lot of code to replace cron :-D
could this not be done with the following

Well, that depends. Does your shell oneliner have a GUI? You're also not playing an iTunes playlist, so you'll probably need to parse the ITL file

Gotta wake the computer up from sleep too. And be able to unmute and adjust the volume. And give non technical users the ability to use it. And support Apple’s old infrared remote. And. And and.

That's a great idea with the subwoofer. I slept straight through my digital alarm the other day. What wakes you up now?

My Apple Watch has been a great alarm clock for the past few years. Its gentle taps on my wrist never fail to wake me up.

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