IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Moby Dick Workout (2022)

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Theme 1 – Massive literary works as size/performance benchmarks

“I used War and Peace to explain to a CEO how wasteful a mobile API was; twelve distinct items of data to display but we sent JSON larger than War and Peace.” – timclark
“Good idea, I might use Crime & Punishment!” – N_Lens
“I use War and Peace for this.” – miiiiiike

Theme 2 – Perceived bloat in classics and how readers cope

“This reminds me of ‘The Jules Test’. Popularised (hyper locally) by my friend Jules.” – jonplackett
“Both (IMHO) are much longer than they need to be.” – znpy
“I think at that point in my life I quite enjoyed how much he laboured the details… I just jump around a few pages if I get bored.” – ehnto

Theme 3 – Real‑world software performance with huge texts

“Logseq … put a five‑page file … into ‘read‑only’ mode because apparently at about 1 k characters … the app couldn't handle the performance impact.” – barrin92
“Even that takes seconds to start on my M1 Max from cold. So then I just wrote … a viewer app … computers are so fast you can open multi‑GB JSON files instantly.” – arjie
“You had me at ‘dick workout’.” – hnbad (shows the humor around the topic)

These three themes capture the core of the discussion: using epic books as size tests, debating their length and how to navigate it, and highlighting performance challenges when handling such large texts in software.

🚀 Project Ideas

Gutenberg Test Data Generator

Summary

  • Provides on‑demand generation of massive public‑domain texts (e.g., Moby Dick, War and Peace, Anna Karenina) at exact byte sizes for reproducible performance testing.
  • Eliminates guesswork in benchmarking file‑handling, streaming, and parsing by supplying standardized large inputs.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, QA engineers, CI/CD pipeline maintainers
Core Feature CLI/web UI that outputs any classic work at configurable size or full text
Tech Stack Python (Flask) + Docker; static text files from Project Gutenberg
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN commenters repeatedly cited using Moby Dick and War and Peace to illustrate megabyte scale and to stress‑test software, showing a clear need for ready‑made large texts.
  • Could be integrated into CI steps to automatically verify that editors don’t choke on multi‑megabyte payloads.

StreamChunk Benchmark Service

Summary

  • Hosted API that streams selected book excerpts at adjustable chunk sizes and artificial latency to mimic real‑world loading conditions.
  • Enables frontend teams to validate lazy‑loading, infinite scroll, and memory usage without manually hosting multi‑MB files.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Frontend engineers, UI/UX designers, product managers
Core Feature Configurable streaming endpoint with selectable book, chunk size, and delay profile
Tech Stack Node.js (Express) + Redis + WebSocket; Dockerized deployment
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: Subscription ($19/mo for 10k requests/day, enterprise tier available)

Notes

  • Directly addresses HN remarks like “I used War and Peace to explain to a CEO how wasteful a mobile API was” by giving teams an easy way to reproduce that scenario.
  • Potential to spark discussion around performance‑first UI design and could serve as a revenue‑generating tool for performance‑testing-as-a-service.

BookBench CLI Benchmark Suite

Summary

  • Command‑line tool that measures load time, rendering latency, and memory footprint of editors/viewers on classic large texts.
  • Generates repeatable benchmark reports to compare editing performance across tools (Zed, Logseq, VS Code, etc.).

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Open‑source contributors, editor developers, performance engineers
Core Feature One‑command benchmark runner with options for text source, concurrency, and output format (JSON/HTML)
Tech Stack Go (Cobra CLI) + Chrome headless for rendering; optional JSON report generator
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Resonates with HN feedback such as “Logseq put a five‑page file… into ‘read only’ mode” highlighting editor limitations on modest‑size texts.
  • Offers a concrete utility for community benchmarking and could foster discussion on editor scalability improvements.

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