Ask HN: Have you used or wrote custom software for use within your friend group?

I've never gone as far as what I would consider "writing software". Whenever I've seen something software would easily solve, it's been easy to hack together with some off-the-shelf tools. Several times I've set up Google Forms (or just had everyone edit a spreadsheet directly) to collect input and then sent the CSV to a little Python script that solved some problem.

Probably my favorite was when my parents decided to pre-bequeath a bunch of their books, movies, and other items they thought their children would like to keep and weren't worth selling. I had everyone enter their prioritized preferences on hundreds of items, and implemented a little algorithm to give people their first preference, with preference towards people that desired fewer things. Saved my parents a lot of overhead and everyone was happy with the result.

Edit: First of all - great idea!

At a time when I was incredibly frustrating with our time sheets system at work I started working on a new one. I never got anyone to test it out and it was never finished, but I gutted it and reused the login parts to create a system that friends of mine and I used to sign up for shared tasks.

Then I began realizing how amazingly unsecure it was (cheap hosting, no code reviews, slow patching - at that point I had way too much on my plate). I was almost begging them to replace it with something supported.

It was great fun to create something that was used regularly over time by more than 100 users but (edit: given the circumstances) also a great relief to get it away.

Today I'm also wishing to create a photo sharing solution. I'll probably try to make it on Google Cloud or Azure this time.