Hacker News Reader

jianzongon Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

ah sorry currently there is no share data feature although I've heard this feature request from time to time, I probably should consider implementing this later. The premium membership can be shared with family members though -- one purchase for all members.

jianzongon Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

I have been building an iOS net worth tracker app as a side project for more than 5 years now:

https://www.percento.app

I was an accountant for 3 years before I switched my career to be a programmer, then I kept coding for 10+ years in big tech companies and had always wanted to build a product on my own. Eventually, I found the niche to combine my finance knowledge and my iOS skills into this App and happily building for a few years.

jianzongon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

I'm building my personal finance App Percento for iOS. More than 10 years after I switched my career from accountant to Dev, and it has been more than 5 years that I worked on this project, how time flies.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/percento-net-worth-tracker/id1...

https://www.percento.app

jianzongon Ask HN: Who needs beta testers?

https://www.percento.app

Description: Designed by a former accountant, Percento is a fast and powerful personal finance manager on iOS. With a clean net worth overview, you can focus on what's important, while minimizing effort to keep track of all your money accounts.

Testing: Feedback On User Experience and localization. Percento is featured multiple times by Apple in my country, and I am looking to promote the App in English speaking countries.

Contact: hi@jakehao.com

jianzongon Ask HN: What are you working on this year?

Continue to work on my indie iOS finance App that helps user to track net worth:

https://www.percento.app

I've been working on this App for 3 years now, I've earned some users in my country. I'm planning to bring more growth in other countries.

jianzongon Building a personal website in 2021

This. Perfect description of how to avoid the real challenge.

- Spend time on inventing library instead of thinking hard about the customer need for an App - Spend time on learning productivity tips instead of doing actual work - And in this case, spend time worrying about the blog platform instead of writing articles

I learn this lesson hard and constantly remind myself to avoid this pitfall.

jianzongon Ask HN: What are you working on?

I am working on an iOS personal finance App that helps you to track assets and expense effortlessly:

https://www.percento.app

Unlike other Apps, Percento encourages you to only track significant money updates of your daily life, minimizing your time spent on tracking money. Features:

- Support multi-currency

- No login needed

- iCloud Sync

- Stock and currency rate sync

I've earned some active users for the past few months, who love the App very much. I haven't marketed the App enough so the audience is still small for English language countries. Can you tell me how you feel about my App?

jianzongon Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

The hardest part of this trick maybe being conscious of our actions while auto-pilot is often the default behavior.

jianzongon Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?

I am working on a personal finance App for iOS that help you to manage assets easily.

Features:

- Dead easy to book keeping

- Plain text export

- Focus on assets management

- Support many iOS platform only features

Currently this is Chinese only but I am looking to support English as well: https://xxz.jakehao.com

jianzongon Show HN: Asciibook – An eBook Generator for AsciiDoc

I like your project.

The fact that Gitbook is no longer maintained is a sad news for me. I don't usually write books but I my favorite to maintain a product manuel is to use Gitbook. For example, here is a prototype for my recent project: https://xxz.jakehao.com

At a first glance Asciibook's interface is not eye appealing as Gitbook. I hope your project can keep the momentum and hope to use it in production one day!

jianzongon Show HN: I taught my little brother JS, and he made this videogame in a week

My brain hurts just imagining this.

jianzongon GitHub Private is Free: Use GitHub as Your Most Powerful Note Taking System

Feels great to connect with you again!

Github on mobile is a pain for me as well, that's why I need to IM-myself for thoughts on the go and even thinking about writing a lightweight app for myself.

jianzongon GitHub Private is Free: Use GitHub as Your Most Powerful Note Taking System

Author here, I am happy to see so many awesome ideas from hacker news on note taking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18837345

Would you let me know whether using Github is a good idea for you to manage your notes? Thanks.

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Props for your simple working solution. Plain text storage is the best!

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

I have the notebook layer and the App layer. A box of Index cards sounds to be a solid staging layer to add to my system. Thank you.

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Thank you srikz!

It is a little surprising to see a handful of recommendation for OneNote. I have never used OneNote before, but will definitely give it a try.

I think one's idea tracking system should cover two parts: fast and slow. The slow part is as you mentioned we should periodically review ideas. For this part, I am almost 100% happy with Github issues/wiki/projects.

For the fast part, like you, I used notebook, IM, Google Keep and a bash script at the same time (whichever that is most handy). I am 90% happy with the process. Given the high frequency of the day I am spending tracking ideas (~10 times per day), I am willing to spend some time to fine tune the practice until I am 99% happy.

The idea I have in mind is to write a IM-like note taking app for iPhone and Mac, which stores plain-text and image in iCloud drive. The app should utilize platform features such as Siri, 3D touch, Mac status bar to enable fastest idea capturing.

This sounds boring to me, but I believe if it is done right, it could be my most efficient zero-effort idea tracking solution on the go. (And review ideas using the plain-text db in iCloud)

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Do you need to somehow maintain IFTTT once in a while? (Even if it is once a year)

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Blame me on not being a good mac-tizen. But a few years ago one day Notes.app somehow failed to sync and all my notes are gone. That day is the day I chose not to believe anything that "just works".

(I didn't bother to figure out what goes wrong. These notes are throw aways anyway)

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Thanks, I use vimwiki for a while a year ago as well. I think it is more suitable for idea organizing. Later I replaced it with a private github repo using issues/wiki/projects.

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

I tried Google keep for a while (a few months I think). But later I find dm-yourself is faster than Google keep so I abandon using.

I think the law of least effort applied to me.

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Using Siri is really neat, you don't even have to unlock your phone I assume. :)

jianzongon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

Thanks for your advice! I agree with you that reviewing is important. I do iterate over a few alternatives before I begin using a private Github repo to organize my ideas that worth picking up. Github wiki/issues/milestones/projects work amazingly good.

On the other hand, I am not very happy with my current random ideas picking strategy. It is really nice to see there are many alternatives in this thread.

jianzongon It is as if you were doing work

I wonder how many people input (or almost input) their real username and password in the first screen.

jianzongon Self-Hosting Google Web Fonts

It is especially useful in China. Since google is blocked, we can not use google font apis as well.