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I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form.

Lessons learned:

* I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design"

* Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal for the user but in actuality sets off peoples' "IAP == crapware" alarm

On the upside, I also made a fake corporate website (http://ineptech.com) to promote it and that was so much fun that I'd probably waste all that time again.




For those checking out the ineptech site, please don't miss the poetry compiler joke! It's the bit I'm the most proud of. It's in an unlinkable modal so actually I'll just paste it here:

    Upon a stack of bits, about so tall,           // Boolean[] isprime = new Boolean[n];
    just think, O traveller, what we could do      // Arrays.fill(isprime, true);
    if every other bit was set to false            // for (int i = 4; i < n; i+=2)
    beginning with (but not including) two?        //   isprime[i] = false;
    
    Now take two lowly numbers, A and B            // for (int a = 3; a < n; a += 2)
    that equal three and two. What would happen    // {
    if they, by twos and ones respectively,        //   for (int b = 2; a*b < n; b++)
    were incremented in a nested fashion,          //   {
    
    And if we falsified, at every turn,            //     isprime[a*b] = false;
    the value offset by A groups of Bs?            //   }
    Then to the aether let those bits return,      // }
    to fly back home to Eratosthenes!              // return isprime;
(You may have figured out that I put a lot more time in to the silly programmer jokes in the fake site than in to the app. Wonder why it never took off...)


Very creative, congrats.

The fact that you made it a poem, reminds me of some extempore poems that I made up as a kid - inspired by reading a book that my uncle bought me as a gift - The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense [2]. It had a lot of funny poems, limericks, etc. in it.

Here are two I made up at the time:

Poem 1:

Mr. Jolly had a brolly [1]

Its handle was made of silver, and its body was made of gold.

And Mr. Jolly used the brolly when it was very cold.

[1] Brolly is a Brit term for umbrella.

Poem 2:

I climbed up a mountain.

There I saw a fountain.

One, two, three, four, five!

In it I'd like to dive.

Go ahead, laugh. It's meant to be funny and silly.

I'll also mention a few good ones I read in that book:

Into the drinking well

Which the plumber built her.

Aunt Eliza fell.

We must buy a filter.

Old Father William:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William

[2] The book is suitable for kids of all ages:

https://www.google.com/searchq=the+golden+book+of+fun+and+no...



This is very, very nicely done. You can rightly be proud of that.


> End-user computers typically include many gigs of porn and mp3s. Remember to make your test environment as realistic as possible!

That made me laugh so hard. Man. Great site.


+1 for jokes in code. I have a thesaurus plugin with an ASCII T-Rex in the source.


You'd probably appreciate the ascii pterodactyl in the source of http://theoatmeal.com


That's my inspiration ;)


Hahah ! I am looking to incorporate this in my code now with due credit :P


Code poetry is drastically underappreciated. I truly enjoyed this.


That's an awesome website. Some highlights:

>Here is a small sampling of our Services offerings:

>GUID duplication

>Lamp stacking

>Despondency injection

>We're hiring! If you're a best-in-breed, 10x, full-stack rock star, we want to talk to you about joining our "posse". Here's what we're looking for:

>Senior Java Developer - Develop 15-20 Senior Javas per day

Maybe you should try to monetize fake companies instead. You're good at it.


Thank you! I had a ton of fun with that, so there are a lot of cute details to find. (For example, check out where the social media "share" buttons on the blog posts go)


I'll second you've got a potential second career in comedy writing, my coworkers and I are currently nearly in tears reading this. Thanks for the Friday laughs.


Thank you so much! I guess I should've posted it somewhere sooner...


That website would be a great portfolio example if you wanted to write for a show like Silicon Valley...


I'm with you on that. The author is doing some great parodies. They should look into how people monetize such humor since it's the strong point. Only if author can keep it going, though.


Congratulations on making this awesome fake website. I had a shit ton of fun going through it. You'd be a rockstar copywriter, if you are not one already.


I'm a QA guy, which may come out in some of the jokes, e.g.:

Ineptech CEO Dick Hallerson wishes to apologize for describing the Quality Assurance group as a "necessary evil." Mr. Hallerson did not mean to imply that QA is necessary.


That is an amazing website. I particularly enjoyed your blog, especially the sharing buttons! :)


The Scrum Master job description totally cracked me up - Champion agile methodologies, hunt down and eliminate remaining waterfall advocates


That site is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Thank you!


I really wanted to check out your website.

However, I think you just exceeded your hoster's bandwidth quota...(error message when I try to access it).


Whoops! Did not expect just being in the comments of a post to /. it that bad. It's hosted with a friend on a not-so-modern platform so the bandwidth limit is not that high.

Back up now, and I broke the path to the silly stock photos, should help keep it up.


Shit I missed it. It says bandwidth exceeded. Can you bring the site back up....

Cursing myself for not checking hackernews more often...


> spline reticulation

Classic. I miss simcopter




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