Dad Jokes
Code for the love of building
As developers, we often find ourselves coding projects just to try it out. Sometimes these projects sit quietly in our machines, portfolios or repositories.
A while ago, I developed a swipable joke app. It was straightforward – swipe through cards to read different jokes. I even integrated it into some of my websites (supertacocat.com and mumbhai.in). Like many side projects, it was fun to build, but I often wondered:
“Who’s actually going to even use this?”
Life Has a Funny Way of Answering
Fast forward to fall 2024. My seven-year-old started coming home from school with an ever-growing collection of jokes. We had daily doses of:
“Why did the cookie go to the doctor?
Because it was feeling crumbly!”
We fell into a routine of asking Alexa or Siri for jokes. One day, on a whim, we decided to slip a handwritten joke into his lunchbox.
The response? - Pure joy
It became our new thing – a little moment of connection during his school day.
The Full Circle Moment
As I found myself asking Alexa for yet another joke one morning, it hit me – I had already built the perfect solution a year ago! My joke app! Instead of waiting for alexa to slowly deliver one joke at a time, I could quickly swipe through dozens of jokes and pick one for the day’s lunchbox note.
This reminded me of an important truth in building: you never really know how the things you build will impact others – or yourself.