After years of teaching programming, I noticed all my students struggled with the same issue: displaying tabular data nicely in console applications. Every semester, when I assigned them tasks involving printing lists, they'd waste hours trying to format output with proper spacing and alignment.
Eventually, I decided to create a simple library to solve this problem once and for all. I wanted something:
- Easy to use with minimal setup
- Flexible enough for various scenarios
- That would make their console applications look professional
The result was a .NET library for rendering console tables that supports multiple themes, custom columns, pagination, and automatic data binding. It's been fantastic for my students and surprisingly useful in my workplace projects too.
I wasn't expecting much interest when I published it, but it's reached over 1,200 downloads in about two weeks. This reinforced something important to me: when you solve your own problems (even seemingly trivial ones), you're often solving problems for others too.
The library is open source under MIT license if anyone wants to check it out or contribute: TableTower
If you find any issues or have suggestions, please let me know through the GitHub issues section!
Has anyone else turned a classroom or workplace pain point into a useful tool? I'd love to hear your stories.
Top comments (1)
Give me what do you think about that product?