DEV Community

What's your favorite useless repo/package/website/etc?

Andy Zhao (he/him) on September 08, 2017

So I'm trying to remedy my carpal tunnel by considering making the decision to give up my mouse completely, and use only the keyboard. I look throu...
Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern •

I'm quite fond of Vanilla JS

Collapse
 
martyhimmel profile image
Martin Himmel • • Edited

This is one of my favorites. I've made it a point to show it to the people I teach JavaScript to. :)

Collapse
 
danieljsummers profile image
Daniel J. Summers •

I LOL'd - literally...

Collapse
 
renalombardero profile image
Renato Lombardero •
Collapse
 
billiegoose profile image
Billie Hilton •

I laughed way too hard at this!

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair •

Oh. Maigod.

I am using this in my next project.

Collapse
 
darksmile92 profile image
Robin Kretzschmar •

That one is awesome! Trying to sneak that into the next project :D

Collapse
 
bhupesh profile image
Bhupesh Varshney 👾 •

Ahh, thats hot

Collapse
 
guergana profile image
Guergana Tzatchkova •

classy!!

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

The BlessYourCodeTag is definitely up there on my list.

Also, activate-power-mode. (Thanks @ben )

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern •

Hell yes, I'm very glad activate-power-mode exists.

Now with a COMBO MODE!!!

Collapse
 
mohr023 profile image
Matheus Mohr •

The world needs more of this

Collapse
 
jacobtyq profile image
Jacob Tan 🤓 •

I've seen that being used in a Code in the Dark challenge. It was hilarious as hell!

Collapse
 
tterb profile image
Brett Stevenson •

I used this package when taking lecture notes all last semester, it helped to keep things interesting in non-CS courses.

Collapse
 
rbanffy profile image
Ricardo Bánffy •

We should eventually add the ability to render things easily on the window bitmap to Emacs someday...

Collapse
 
r0f1 profile image
Florian Rohrer •

A Latex package to add coffee stains.

hanno-rein.de/archives/349

Collapse
 
niorad profile image
Antonio Radovcic • • Edited

Emacs "Zone"-Mode (It comes with Emacs)

Emacs Zone

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) • • Edited

We've got GitHub flavored markdown, so it's like so:

![alt-text-for-image](https://link-to-image.com)

We'll definitely add it in the markdown cheatsheet though, not the first time someone's wondered. 🙃

Collapse
 
maestromac profile image
Mac Siri •

This one is funny and potentially useful once every blue moon: foaas.com/

Collapse
 
prettydeveloper profile image
Lucia Moreno •

I really love using cfonts to spice up my shell scripting :)

Collapse
 
oxygen0211 profile image
Julian Engelhardt •

Definitely got to keep that one in mind :-) . Also, I guess it tells a lot about your mindset if you write down the whole alphabet and 0 to 9 as a list instead of going [A-Z], [0-9] :-D

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Aha that's great!

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair •

I use figlet to tell me what machine I've shelled into. Non-useless, because I'm an idiot and will get it wrong otherwise!

Also, piping it through lolcat makes it all pretty.

Collapse
 
tmr232 profile image
Tamir Bahar •

My favorite has to be /dev/null as a Service.

Collapse
 
danieljsummers profile image
Daniel J. Summers •

Thanks for the tip - maybe I can be their next "Map-Enlarge Engineer"...

Collapse
 
agc93 profile image
Alistair Chapman •

Hard to go past System.Ben for me. Best .NET library in the world...

Collapse
 
danieljsummers profile image
Daniel J. Summers •

Fast and secure - by default!

Collapse
 
prettydeveloper profile image
Lucia Moreno • • Edited

And also Rythm.js: a javascript library that makes your page dance!!

Check out the cool demo page

Collapse
 
dimitri_acosta profile image
Dimitri Acosta •

This is pretty cool

Collapse
 
maxwell_dev profile image
Max Antonucci •

TrumpScript - Making Python Great Again (github.com/samshadwell/TrumpScript)

It's a programming language inspired by Trump, and as a result is entertaining to read about but impossible to make use of for anything serious (as the docs say). Here's some of the features:

No floating point numbers, only integers. America never does anything halfway.
All numbers must be strictly greater than 1 million. The small stuff is inconsequential to us.
There are no import statements allowed. All code has to be home-grown and American made.
Instead of True and False, we have the keywords fact and lie.

Collapse
 
janetmndz profile image
Janet Mendez •

I really like doge

Collapse
 
hrishio profile image
Hrishi Mittal •
Collapse
 
qaislam profile image
qais lam •

What about the Hacker Typer by WhiteScreentest.net

Collapse
 
mattjmattj profile image
Matthias Jouan •
Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

I made the mistake of clicking this in the office with my sound on

Not proud

Collapse
 
depado profile image
Depado •

I created an automated religious API so you can pray the API god with an API call. Basically, automating religion. Jagon API
I usually pray whenever I start a build in my CI. Completely useless.

Collapse
 
sake_92 profile image
Sakib Hadžiavdić •

This one is a-mazing: projects.haykranen.nl/java/

Collapse
 
takaakifuruse profile image
TakaakiFuruse • • Edited

RoR has "forty_two" method.

(1..42).to_a.forty_two # => 42

apidock.com/rails/Array/forty_two
api.rubyonrails.org/classes/Active...

Collapse
 
maestromac profile image
Mac Siri •

oh god my ears

Collapse
 
philnash profile image
Phil Nash •

In an effort to catch Ruby up to the crazy number of Node.js modules, I wrote and released is_even during a lightning talk. You can see the video here: youtu.be/UT0Rl_EJNN4?t=795

Collapse
 
rapidnerd profile image
George • • Edited

This is pretty much the most useless thing I've ever seen
alt text
hub.spigotmc.org/stash/projects/SP...
Even says it's useless in the class

Collapse
 
jessehattabaugh profile image
Jesse Hattabaugh •

Whenever I set up a test runner I have to use the nyan reporter youtu.be/UfNeezklIUc

Collapse
 
incognitjoe profile image
Joe Butler •
Collapse
 
benaryorg profile image
#benaryorg •

Not useful by itself, but definitely one of my favourite non-things is example.com.

Together with example.net and example.org it's reserved as per rfc2606.

I don't know if this qualifies as useless as there's use for it.…

Collapse
 
jvanbruegge profile image
Jan van Brügge •

I really like sl, it displays a steam locomotive when you type sl instead of ls. Not cancelable of course!

Collapse
 
rbanffy profile image
Ricardo Bánffy •

Since I spend a lot of time on Twitter discussing politics, chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/... (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/a...) is a must in these dark times.

I also have been naming my hosts with nsaname (npmjs.com/package/nsaname)

Disclaimer: I built them.

Collapse
 
cmmata profile image
Carles Mata •

I really like this one when I'm on a terminal: Pokemonsay
pokemonsay-example

Collapse
 
lovis profile image
Lovis •

This needs more love ❤️

Collapse
 
nemanjavlahovic profile image
Nemanja Vlahović •
Collapse
 
phallstrom profile image
Philip Hallstrom •
Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair •

That's actually quite useful.

Collapse
 
pixelbrackets profile image
Dan •

Favorite useless repo: »No Code - The best way to write secure and reliable applications« github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

Favorite useless package: Good old »cowsay« packages.ubuntu.com/de/trusty/cowsay / packagist.org/packages/alrik11es/c...

Favorite useless website: »/dev/null as a Service« devnull-as-a-service.com/code/

Collapse
 
punio4 profile image
Ivan Čurić •

Is it wrong that I recognized woman.gif as Grimes?
youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE

Collapse
 
joshcheek profile image
Josh Cheek •

I'm super distracted by the header image setting a class variable on instance initialization and the type error in lonely_method.

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) • • Edited

It's served it's purpose then. 😉

I'm not that big on linters, but the gray lines really irked me when I wrote that up.

Collapse
 
rangerrick profile image
Benjamin Reed • • Edited

99 replies and not a single link to Zombocom? I am so disappointed… Guess I'll be the first. :)

(technically not a "programming" thing but it is inspirational… and definitely useless)

Collapse
 
rbanffy profile image
Ricardo Bánffy •

I'm very fond of the useless tools I make. Unpepefy - github.com/rbanffy/unpepefy (and its back-end, Naziscore - github.com/rbanffy/naziscore) is one such thing.

Another useless tool (I prefer the term "inutility") is github.com/rbanffy/selectric-mode. It makes your Emacs sound important. Some people add it as a minor mode for Markdown so they feel better about writing documentation.

Another one is github.com/rbanffy/nsaname, a tool I made so I could properly assign codenames to projects or just make server names sound cooler. Who doesn't like to ssh to deity-maker so that they can work on KrakenGibson HX.

Collapse
 
amarlearning profile image
Amar Prakash Pandey • • Edited

CLI for downloading sub-directory of any Github repository using Github Content API!

screenshot

My favorite tool is: Github Sectory.

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Least it's honest!

Collapse
 
bgadrian profile image
Adrian B.G. •

I do not have a favorite but I am amazed by the small NPM packages that can be replaced by JS6+ or Lodash.

Collapse
 
djviolin profile image
István Lantos • • Edited

My favourite useless time waster is webpack. I can spend days, weeks in front of it, just to realize probably I will get a less sized project if I completely abandone it.

Collapse
 
hawarioware profile image
Wajdi Al-Hawari •

The two that come to mind:

foaas.com/
baconipsum.com/

Collapse
 
tterb profile image
Brett Stevenson • • Edited

baconipsum is good, but I personally prefer slipsum.com.

Collapse
 
hawarioware profile image
Wajdi Al-Hawari •

I never knew this existed. Thank you. This is perfect.

Thread Thread
 
theminshew profile image
Michael Minshew •

I was bored working on a mockup and realized that there isnt a picard ipsum generator. Something fun for this weekend I think.

Collapse
 
rpalo profile image
Ryan Palo •

That Readme for BlessYourCodeTag is everything I wanted it to be. Hyper terminal has several fun plugins too!

Collapse
 
kodierkroete profile image
Steffen Frosch •

I did not write this but i do really enjoy this php library table-flip made by @SaraMG

Collapse
 
simme profile image
Simme •

github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode and github.com/jezen/is-thirteen are both forever in my heart. ❤️

Collapse
 
michael profile image
Michael Lee 🍕 • • Edited

Awww man, I was secretly hoping that by pressing the [bless | ramen] button, an option to bless the creator with a pack of ramen would show up. Hope your wrists are feeling better Andy!

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

That would be amazing!

Also, thanks about the wrists :) They're getting there!

Collapse
 
whozzawuzza profile image
'''⌐(ಠ۾ಠ)¬''' • • Edited
Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) • • Edited

Link 404'd :( You're probably missing http:// before the link.

Collapse
 
pratikaambani profile image
Pratik Ambani •

Thank God!!!
Nobody is asking me to show my ridiculously messed up git repository.. 😊😊

Collapse
 
draganfill profile image
Dragan Filipović •
Collapse
 
zero profile image
zero •
Collapse
 
soupwaylee profile image
Stefan Su (he/him) •

Still in the progress of understanding FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition.

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Bahaha I like the issues and PRs, like "Dockerize the app," "make code coverage bigger," and "split the monolith."

Collapse
 
yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson •

nocode

hackertyper is fun for showing off to your friends ;)

Collapse
 
juliettemijeon profile image
Juliette Mijeon •

I like this one personally : packagist.org/packages/kk/chuck-co...

Collapse
 
vpzomtrrfrt profile image
VpzomTrrfrt •

I like Dogescript enough to mirror their website after it went down. dogescript.science

Collapse
 
dpells02 profile image
David Pellegrini •

cmatrix and sl are some of my favourites to sit and watch for hours

Collapse
 
lukasjuhas profile image
Lukas Juhas •
Collapse
 
transitivebullshit profile image
Travis Fischer •
Collapse
 
vishalnarkhede profile image
Vishal Narkhede •

How about this one? :D
github.com/vishalnarkhede/not-hotdog

Collapse
 
tterb profile image
Brett Stevenson •

Just stumbled upon this and knew it belonged on the list, Cage Icons

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Hahaha I started using VS Code not too long ago. I might need to use this.

Collapse
 
dschep profile image
Daniel Schep •

Cornify of course!! ✨🦄✨🦄✨

Collapse
 
dimitribosch profile image
✌️ dim •

In France, we have this one : perdu.com
I love it

Collapse
 
david_ojeda profile image
David Ojeda •
Collapse
 
bhupesh profile image
Bhupesh Varshney 👾 •

Oh damnnnn
🤣🤣🤣
It's good to some fun with what you love i guess

Collapse
 
nervewax profile image
nervewax •

Has to be fukol-grids
I'm surprised this one hasn't been posted yet!

Collapse
 
ghost profile image
Ghost •

The only one brave enough to tell the truth.
github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

Collapse
 
vishalnarkhede profile image
Vishal Narkhede •

lol max!!

Collapse
 
jballanc profile image
Joshua Ballanco •

Have to give a shout-out to Swearjure: Valid Clojure without any alphanumeric characters!

Collapse
 
andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him) •

Language of the future right there!