HACKER Q&A
📣 blockwriter

What do I code next?


I started coding about two years ago because I planned to open a coffeeshop and bookstore and wanted to think about management from first principles by coding a management system. I then started coding a web application to augment the process of reading, writing, publishing and distributing literature, which is my primary occupation. Both projects have come together nicely. I find that they are both truly useful, and I am starting to consider them largely complete. I am endeavoring to hire my first full stack developer to take over and improve upon these two projects, but I feel at a loss in the meantime about what to code next.

Does anyone have a suggestion? I want to code for roughly one hour a day going forward. I enjoy having projects feed into one another meaningfully. For example: I have set up a system to automatically get the metadata of a comic book, automatically price it, image the book, and list the book, so that all that is required of me is to scan the barcode. With this, and offering comics for sale at the coffeeshop, I should be able to acquire collections fairly readily from patrons. The finances of the various operations are all logged in a manner that allows for comprehensive reports to be made of them individually and in concert. My initial thought is to make work on robust graphing functionality so that I am presented with an overview of various metrics related to these project when I wake up in the morning. I can use pyplot, but not expertly. My other thought is to develop some kind of game that is part and parcel with being a regular at a coffeeshop. When I run scripts, I have to do so manually, so maybe some kind of project that helps to automate running scripts would be good. Below is a brief, non-exhaustive overview of the languages, the services, and the like that I have used so far.

-Python -Flask -Javascript -HTML -AWS EC2 -AWS RDS -AWS S3 -MySQL -Stripe -Web-scraping -Raspberry Pi

P.S. Are there any full-stack developers in Chicago, Illinois, or nearby states looking for a job?


  👤 sysadm1n Accepted Answer ✓
> When I run scripts, I have to do so manually, so maybe some kind of project that helps to automate running scripts would be good

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1319/

I often ponder this too. Like how much automation is enough? You'll be glad to know most businesses thrive because of some arcane piece of automation that holds the business together. The 'lynch-pin' mechanism which if absent, would destroy the company.