[kurtvarner]

It's sad that people call their little/fun projects useless. I just used your project and thought it was awesome. And even the worst project ever is useful for you. It's how you learn, build and explore. Plus, some truly great things have started out as "useless."

[olalonde]

Sadly, it's often a good idea to preface "Show HN" submissions with this nowadays so that someone else doesn't tell you how useless your project is in the comments thread.

[instakill]

It's the analogous of Reddit comments starting with "I know this will be downvoted but..."

[olalonde]

Sort of, except that this is usually considered as down vote baiting on HN and is frowned upon. From HN's guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."[0]. In this case though, I don't feel it was OP's intention to invite down votes.

[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[JonnieCache]

    All art is quite useless
        - Oscar Wilde

Perhaps "pointless" or "aimless" might be better than useless, but a useless item can be a item which exists merely to delight the mind/spirit. Of course, internet pedants and other cutting edge point-missers would likely argue that this is in fact itself a use. Such is the way of things.

Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.

[thisisdallas]

Exactly this.

If the op learned anything at all from this project I would argue that it is in fact far from useless.

Great job on setting a goal and creating something, op!

[StavrosK]

Awesome and useful are orthogonal. I found it awesome too, but I have no use for it.

[soccerniru]

I wouldn't say that they are necessarily orthogonal, in fact, I would say that most of the time they align pretty well.

[sadlyNess]

In what is usually described as a sweet spot or what Steve would call good design.

[chezmo]

Thanks for the kind words!