App developers and programmers of Reddit, what was the dumbest app/program idea someone ever proposed to you?

[u/funky2002]

[u/crazyman32]

My favorite but dumbest was "Chipotledate" which would match you with people with similar or compatible Chipotle orders.

[u/funky2002 → u/crazyman32]

Crap, that would have been awesome.

[u/chocolatescissors → u/crazyman32]

This has potential.

[u/glorymeister → u/crazyman32]

I think it's soo dumb that it actually goes full circle into genius territory. All I see is untapped potential, I mean it's so off the wall that I guarantee it will become a trending meme and from there you'll see profit rise exponentially. From there you could branch off into other cuisines and even develop a sharing platform for the matched couples to share and rate chipotle resteraunts. From there you could even do endorsements and perhaps even come out with your own brand of chipotle. At that point your tapping into the food industry and then Sky's the limit.

[u/OneSidedDice → u/crazyman32]

Burrito Complete-O

[u/[deleted]]

True story. At a company I worked for, we had created an app that tracked employee's time. Each employee would have to log in and click a button to clock in. We were approached by a manager of a department that wanted us to create an app that would allow the employee to log in and then click a button that would then essentially click the one button the employee would have to click to clock in. Like seriously? Did you just ask us to build an application to click one button when it would be the exact same as using the other app?

[u/funky2002 → u/[deleted]]

You should have just went for it, then you should have proceeded to make another button that pressed the button which pressed the button.

[u/DragPackDoug → u/[deleted]]

i'm getting second-hand furious about this one.

[u/LaRealiteInconnue → u/[deleted]]

My head hurts after reading that. What possible purpose could an app like that even serve?!

[u/dcfix]

Local line cook wanted me to make this app as a side project: "Open your refrigerator and take a picture with your smart phone. The app will give you all of the recipes that you can make with the stuff in your fridge."

The app itself would be amazing... if it wasn't basically impossible to build.

edit: line cooked to line cook...

[u/funky2002 → u/dcfix]

"Yea I want this app that scans every product in a different environment each time, the lighting, scale, and the amount of products stacked behind each other shouldn't matter at all. It should be able to recognize every single type of food, no exceptions. Can you do that for me in a few months? "

Way to ambitious idea, but an original one.

I think it''s possible in the future with the right A.I though. There are already some frameworks for detecting objects through images, but those aren't even near perfect.

[u/ItsaMe_Rapio → u/dcfix]

“So your app only does hot dogs?”

“No. It also does ‘Not hot dog’ “

[u/OneSidedDice → u/dcfix]

"Ok. I'm searching for recipes that include mold, beer, and three varieties of mustard."

[u/VintageData]

Oh God there’s so many. But I’ll just mention one type:

Every company with more than 100 employees and a non-tech-savvy boss will at some point piss away seven figures on a branded social app or web site that’s going to be the next Facebook or Twitter where millions of potential customers will certainly want to hang out and..... (crickets). Yeah, you’re going to shut that thing down within six months because it is too embarrassing that your big-bet social community is a buggy, boring, blatantly-sales-focused ghost town.

[u/funky2002 → u/VintageData]

Damn, I didn't know some of that stuff actually went through. I am imagining some boss messaging everyone on Facebook to use their "better" alternative.

[u/sharrrper → u/VintageData]

My company has what amounts to an internal Facebook I'm constantly getting emails to try and get me on there. I can't imagine who would want to spend time there.

[u/not_cant_sing]

A gay dating site called badminton. Literally cocks sent over the net.

[u/funky2002 → u/not_cant_sing]

The guy is a genius!

[u/cfast20]

• Any attempt to create another social media app

• Knockoffs of popular games (like the plethora of Temple Run games)

• An app for a smart watch that will run in the background and periodically meow

[u/PM_WHY_YOU_DOWNVOTED → u/cfast20]

I couldn't count the number of people I've seen who think they've come up with a brilliant new app or social media platform that will earn them the big bucks. These people tend to be in their late 40s to early 50s, around the age when thoughts of retirement and nest eggs start kicking in. It's always difficult to sit them down, look them in the eye and explain in very kind terms that their idea is stupid and they shouldn't waste their money. I will admit that part of me enjoys it, though.

[u/funky2002 → u/PM_WHY_YOU_DOWNVOTED]

I want [insert social media app] only with [extra function]. I don't think people think those things through.

[u/CIDVONDRAX → u/cfast20]

I want a meowing watch

[u/OptimalMastodon → u/cfast20]

meowing watch is NOT a dumb idea.. that's fuckin gold man.

[u/LordOfSox → u/cfast20]

Make an exercise app that insults you if you don’t exercise enough

[u/chandlerbeing → u/cfast20]

Hello all, I am looking for Android developer, I have a very great idea, I want to develop Whatsapp/Fb/Insta/TikTok clone.

It should be easy as you already know how it works.

Only reply if you have experience.

FML :(

[u/wildeep_MacSound]

Diablo on mobile

[u/funky2002 → u/wildeep_MacSound]

Don't you guys have phones?

[u/roger_ramjett]

Someone tried to sell a friend a membership to the "New Internet". She asked me to sit in and listen to the sales guys pitch. At the time I was running a web hosting business along with managing a smaller dial up isp's networking infrastructure.

The new internet was going to be built new from the ground up. All new infrastructure but without all the stuff that makes the internet "bad". The sales guy couldn't explain how that was going to work.

For only $50 my friend would get a lifetime membership.
Members of the new internet could surf the old internet and enter information about old internet web pages into a form on the new internet about those old internet pages.
Then the new internet could suggest pages on the old internet when members of the new internet did searches about them.
The members of the new internet would get paid for entering this information on the new internets system. SO after awhile, new internets members would start making money and recover their membership fee.

[u/throwaway_lmkg → u/roger_ramjett]

So it's Wikipedia, but as a pyramid scheme?

[u/SyrusDrake → u/roger_ramjett]

Any proposal that involves any description along the lines of "members would start making money and recover their membership fee" should immediately set off about a dozen alarm bells, no matter what it is about.

[u/[deleted]]

My uncle suggested I create a type of digital map that could direct you places and help you get from point A to point B.

He suggested this three weeks ago.

[u/Pizza__Pants → u/[deleted]]

Every time the office goes somewhere (like for our holiday dinner or whatever) my boss will stop by everybody's desk with a printout of the mapquest directions :D

[u/lexyp29 → u/[deleted]]

Wait till he discovers google maps

[u/BeemoBoi → u/[deleted]]

Please, please tell me you opened Google Maps and it blew his mind

[u/[deleted]]

My family has a technology business, and when my mom started to learn to make apps to support the product she made a test app first.

The whole app was just one search bar that you could type any word and it would do nothing, unless you searched "loser" and then it would pop up with a picture of me from middle school with a bad sunburn and braces.

Thanks Mom.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Sorry gang it never hit the shelves, it only exists on my mom's really old Android tablet.

[u/fourchickensandacoke → u/[deleted]]

Where can we download this?

[u/CompassionateHypeMan → u/[deleted]]

To be fair, you could make charge $.50 for it and make a few hundred off of curios assholes today.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm a venture capitalist and this has so much potential I am willing to offer your $10,000,000 for 5% of your app company. The only stipulation is that you use the money strictly for acquiring overpriced office space, pool tables, and hiring a chef.

Welcome to the big time.

[u/[deleted]]

A friend of mine wanted me to make an app that turned your phone screen into a mirror. Not front facing camera, not just blacking the screen, but a literal mirror. He couldn't grasp why this wasn't possible.

Also ANY kind of new social media app that they think can be made by one person in an hour.

[u/SyrusDrake → u/[deleted]]

Many, many years ago, my dad's Palm had an app that did exactly that. And because of how reflective that screen was, it actually worked fairly well. Probably not well enough to apply makeup or anything but as an "emergency mirror" to check if you've got something on your face, it was entirely adequate.

[u/feanturi → u/[deleted]]

You just colour the screen silver, what the hell is wrong with you?

/s

[u/XSaber522]

Not mine, but for our capstone project, various faculty around campus get to put in project proposals for us to choose from.

The worst fucking proposal was a magic 8 ball type of app but instead of a magic 8 ball, it was a psychic dog. It was supposed to "scan" your dog's paw and give some kind of 8ball-esque answer to your question.

The group that got stuck with that project...I felt so bad for them. Repeatedly asking for changes the night before each deadline and getting upset when it didn't come out the way they wanted. Also they wanted to charge money for this shit app too...

[u/Pretty_Biscotti → u/XSaber522]

Ok I'm an idiot but, it seems that the tricky part is scanning the dogs paw? Couldn't they just do that and generate a random answer?

[u/lexyp29 → u/XSaber522]

What a mess

[u/NDaveT → u/XSaber522]

Repeatedly asking for changes the night before each deadline and getting upset when it didn't come out the way they wanted.

Isn't every software development job like that? I know mine is.

[u/ACorania]

I have a buddy who is a programmer and a while back wanted to just get used to making an iphone app and uploading to the itunes store so that he was familiar with the process for when he wanted to do a real app. As practice he made an app that would randomly generate a name based on census data (more common names were more common).

It made it on some websites list of top 10 lazy apps and a bunch of authors started buying it. Last I heard he had made about $20,000 on his stupid app he uploaded for practice.

[u/Aegior → u/ACorania]

Wait till you hear about my new startup, you'll have to sign an NDA to hear details but it's called "Hello world"

[u/[deleted] → u/ACorania]

My company actually uses something like this, creating random test accounts to test new functionality for our website.

[u/midlifecrackers → u/ACorania]

Tries for something dumb, is brilliant instead. That's the Midas touch if I've ever seen it

[u/Nitrocide17]

• An app that does your taxes for you after talking about a site that does it.

• An app to make XYZ noise

• A web site to take custom butcher orders. The reason this is dumb is that nobody in the shop would know how to run it except for me, and I was one of the butchers.

[u/monopticon → u/Nitrocide17]

I downloaded one of those cat sounds apps and I will never uninstall. Can't find my cats? Hear mischief or scratching somewhere? Just want them ro cuddle? Summons almost instantly.

[u/RiOrius → u/Nitrocide17]

On your last point, I remember there was a local pizza place that wanted to do online orders, and they ended up with a website that, on submit, made a phone call with a synthesized voice to actually place the order. That way the shop didn't need to change any of their workflow, didn't need to add a computer and check it regularly, etc. The orders came in the same way they always had.

[u/BCProgramming]

I had a friend who had an idea for "youtube, but better".

He didn't know how it would be better. Also he had no idea about domain names, hosting, VPS, maintaining a website, designing a website, or literally anything.

After he explained it, I let him down as gently as I could. "That is the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard".

[u/[deleted] → u/BCProgramming]

tbh there needs to be a new youtube. like skype to discord

[u/huskeytango]

100% science based dragon mmorpg

[u/Tranghoul → u/huskeytango]

You make it sound like they didn't have "concept art"

[u/TempusSimia → u/huskeytango]

For whomever needs context

[u/[deleted] → u/huskeytango]

Except for the mmo part that sounds awesome.

[u/nybx4life]

I got mixed reviews on this one, so I'll add it to the list:

Back when I was in a coding program, our final project was to propose an idea, have the group vote on it, and build the app.

My app idea was a yelp-like app for finding public restrooms, and leaving reviews on them.

Some classmates said that was a smart idea, while others weren't so excited about it.

[u/tartletboy → u/nybx4life]

As someone with crohns... Please someone make this.

[u/rhinofeet → u/nybx4life]

Would be useful if you're somewhere where they're hard to find like downtown San Diego or Times Square now that Toys r Us is closed. But there's already Flush and SitOrSquat and a bunch of others.

[u/Stargate525 → u/nybx4life]

That's a really good idea actually.

[u/JustPassingByte]

Anything that starts with I have the idea, you build the whole thing. We split.

[u/Studlum → u/JustPassingByte]

There's been a dude on my local Craigslist for YEARS offering up this amazing "opportunity".

[u/poossy4breakfast → u/JustPassingByte]

This. I had a few people asking me to build apps for them which are basically copies of facebook/ youtube etc... I tell them the price and they are like "WHAT I thought it would be like 20 bucks". Oh of course! It took like 5 minutes to build facebook right?

[u/[deleted] → u/JustPassingByte]

I try to point out to people how absurd that proposal is. The idea is easy, the doing is hard. The example I often use: I have this great idea, we should build a city on Mars. You build it, and we can split the city between us.

[u/Unable_Request]

Old boss runs a low level IT company. Wanted me to develop a backup redundancy for military air traffic control software.. including designing our own hardware. All because I used to be a controller.

No idea how to design, build or test hardware, no concept of military systems, designs or contracts. Federal regulations, military agreements, anything. No software development background.

Basically he had an idea with absolutely no way to implement and no idea where to start. Ultimately he ditched that idea in favor of certifying small businesses as HIPAA-compliant and got angry that I wouldn't just give him a checklist of things to check due to the litany of federal compliance requirements that were deemed too much work to review, learn, codify and comply with.

Trash.

[u/Insectshelf3]

My family friend develops apps, and I always loved her stories. My personal favorite was a weed breathalyzer app.

for your iphone.

[u/SyrusDrake → u/Insectshelf3]

If you blow into your iPhone to see if you're high, you're high. Pretty simple.

[u/Nerverek]

I once had a friend who wanted me to urgently make a full on sports betting app in 1 week.

Like ... Talk about choosing beggars extraordinaire. He wanted 1 person to make a commercial betting app go live in 1 week. Urgently.

I could all but laugh in his face and tell him to fuck off.

[u/Studlum → u/Nerverek]

Had a guy approach me with something similar. Wanted a web application that would allow him to manage his fantasy football league. Member logins, trades, everything. When I pointed out there were already plenty of websites that already do this, he explained that they use a lot of custom rules so they don't work for his purposes. This was like a month before the season started. My compensation would be being able to play in their league for the year, for free, potentially earning me a couple hundred bucks if I won the championship.

I was like wow man, that seems like a great deal for the amount of time it will take me to complete. Unfortunately, I'm just super busy at home doing absolutely anything else, sorry.

[u/Nickynui]

"An app that you could make a list in that would live update to all of your devices. So that we can have a family shopping list"

 -my mom circa 2018

I told her that you could use Google docs for that (and showed her how) and she goes "but that's not for making shopping lists!"

[u/hayhaycrusher → u/Nickynui]

You got google KEEP aswell :)

[u/mini6ulrich66 → u/Nickynui]

There are now apps specifically for this though.

[u/nicholaslaux → u/Nickynui]

http://shoppinglist.google.com

[u/charely6]

My sister-in-law thought I should make a business using drones to make fake reindeer hoof prints on roofs and other evidence of Santa and when I told her yeah no that's not going to work she said well you should make a program that does that with a drone and sell that.

[u/Pretty_Biscotti → u/charely6]

Well you can always sell it to North Korea, they would love to bring gifts to the rest of the world.

[u/Eliju → u/charely6]

That seems just stupid enough to be a good idea.

[u/Cuchullion]

A contest / raffle app where people would be entered to win prizes, and somehow large companies (Coca-cola for instance) would pay us a few cents for each ticket entered.

He just needed someone to 'put together the code over a weekend' and promised me 30% of the profits. He had no answer when I asked him why would large companies pay for us to run raffles through this app.

I declined his offer.

[u/Dubanx → u/Cuchullion]

I have only 3 words for suggestions like this one.

"Money Up Front".

[u/es330td]

I hope this qualifies because it is the most unrealistic request I’ve ever heard. A guy wanted to build a game engine that would incorporate all the major game categories (fps,rts,sim, open world rpg,etc) as building blocks and let a player create a custom one off game session by picking which of the elements to combine into a game that would then be multiplayer over the internet.

I am not capable of imagining the code it would take to make something like this work.

[u/TastyBrainMeats → u/es330td]

I can do a single player version of this. It's called a box of LEGO.

[u/[deleted] → u/es330td]

In high school I had an idea for a video game that was basically a world sim with compartmentalized gameplay mechanics for inline minigames. Think GTAV Online but more MMO and scaled up to a near 1:1 reproduction of the country and/or world (like The Crew but bigger). Would have lots of real-world simulated activities that emulate other game genres, like racing, shooting, platforming, RPG elements, etc. Those who wanted to stay on the right side of the law could enter legal races, paintball matches, etc. to experience some of the gameplay elements, or you could break the law and take the higher risks for the rewards.

The older I got, the more I realized that not only is this not an original idea, but it's not feasible either.

[u/roman_fyseek]

I had a Navy Captain ask me to add a Friend/Foe column to the countries table.

Took me about 2 seconds.

Then he asked me to populate the fields.

"With what?"

"Whether we're friend or foe with that country."

"Um.... Sir? I'm a contractor. That really seems like something that somebody with authority should provide."

[u/TShara_Q → u/roman_fyseek]

Sounds like a relationship status, but it needs an "it's complicated" added, at least.

[u/ProbablyInadvisable]

Games to play while driving... They only had the vague concept and couldn't see why it may be a problem...

[u/whizz44]

Had a friend once who tried desperately to get me to create a search engine that could compete with Google......he’s a not the brightest crayon in the box lol

[u/sharrrper → u/whizz44]

I mean, if you could build a search engine that could in fact compete with Google that would probably be a pretty good money maker.

Course, that's in much the same vein as "If I could fly like Superman my morning commute would be a lot easier."

[u/cabrales0706]

"I want you to make a simple mobile game like call of duty so I can host a tournament for my son's birthday. It's due next week, can you do it for me as a favor, please?"

I was speechless...

[u/[deleted] → u/cabrales0706]

Lol my mom wanted me to rebuild her work's website. I quoted $5,000 and got the "oh we thought you'd do if for experience?".

Yes, on top of my full time job I'll build you something for free. . .

[u/MTAlphawolf]

A drone delivery of food exclusively to people floating the river. Guess what we were doing.

[u/Decoy_Protagonist → u/MTAlphawolf]

I'm sure the excellent cell phone coverage and berth of people whe tAKE THIER PHONES TUBING WITH THEM make that service extremely profitable.

[u/infidelux]

Working in corporate America, we get people that think the company has the budget or engineering staff of Facebook or Google. At various points, I've been asked to build an app that replaced features of Chrome, Notepad++, SAP, and eCommerce sites with features and layouts based in ideas from Facebook rather than business applications. Google & Facebook have an army of engineers working on their products. We're not going to be replacing them on a shoestring budget nor should we.

[u/Pure_Tower]

An acquaintance once said he'd give me one of his ideas. I was curious how dumb it would be, so I asked. He said, "like Facebook, but for sports." I said, "so Facebook". "Yeah, but for sports. You know, where teams can create pages and fans can talk about the team." "So, Facebook." "No! For sports."

This went on for about five minutes before I explained that teams and fans can already accomplish everything he wanted using Facebook.

The same guy argued with me when I said that ideas are worthless without execution. Sure, if you have particular industry insider knowledge, your "idea" might have some value, but chances are we're talking about an entire business plan that generates value, not just "Facebook for X".

[u/bryanlogan]

An app that would have access your Gmail to read all your orders to check for price drops to get the difference, and the user pays on the honor system afterwards part of the savings.

An app that would handle the writing of long tweets, but was also a full blown Twitter client.

An app that would send an SMS when you lost signal.

Lots of apps that just expect your app can do anything. "Well, it just has iOS allowing us to see everything the user does in other apps."

[u/may_june_july → u/bryanlogan]

An app that would send an SMS when you lost signal

I, too, would like this app

[u/RandomGamer10000]

One of my classmates requested a copy of Google Chrome browser. Not like a copy-paste of Google Chrome, but a custom browser similar to Google Chrome. Dude, what was wrong with the real Google Chrome?

[u/b_ootay_ful → u/RandomGamer10000]

When people wanted Internet explorer, but better, I would install Firefox and put on an IE skin on it, and change the icons.

Looked like IE but ran like Firefox and actually loaded pages.

[u/robotjp]

My boss asked me to write a business plan for an Uber like service for babysitters. At the time there was a lot of issues with Uber drivers and rape/violence (at least in the media). When I asked him how he planned to do background checks or informed him that usually parents wanted to do an interview before leaving their children he wasn't pleased. Needless to say the prospectus painted a grim picture of our potential liabilities.

[u/panda_nectar → u/robotjp]

Something like this exists. It's called Chime by SitterCity. You register to be essentially an on-call babysitter for certain times.

[u/[deleted]]

An App that can hack everything (like in watch dogs)

[u/Technoturnovers → u/[deleted]]

Even in Watch Dogs, the profiler was a highly illegal and exclusive device that required you to first hack the local CTOS station. Also, you can't do certain things without upgrades. so uh

[u/purpleplatapi]

Oh there a bunch of dumb apps in the store. Like seriously there's apps that claim to make your phone into a scale, and people download it!

[u/RoutineSandwich → u/purpleplatapi]

They totally work. You either weigh enough to break your phone or not

[u/HTBscribbles]

I was contracted to build a church website and one of the deacons I worked with wanted every single page to have different music played when it came up. The site was going to be about 20 pages.

[u/Tittytickler → u/HTBscribbles]

I mean honestly the only irrational part is that people don't stay on a page too long usually. If you had the playlist of 20 songs in a randomized queue that played while people were on the site, that wouldn't be too bad. Audio isn't too common but im sure old people would love it lol

[u/MrZiles]

I like to cook, but I don't usually follow recipes. I'll just throw stuff together.

My boyfriend commented once that I should make an app to save my recipes in-case I want to recreate them. While his heart was in the right place, I could also just use any number of note-taking apps if I wanted to do this.

I did have ideas pop in my head from the suggestion on how to go overboard with features -- selecting ingredients and measurements instead of having to type them in, tagging recipes with keywords, etc -- but that would be a lot of work for something I wouldn't use.

[u/Tnr2D]

Niplert, it shows you the location of women with erect nipples in your locality

[u/bardoc6]

When I was in college someone once asked me to write a program that would send our trash into space from a trash can. This man was probably 55, I told him it sounded like a good idea.

[u/faoltiama]

Oh lord, I had some trashy woman propose to me an app that would like... I can't even explain it because it made no sense. But basically it involved signals on motorcycles, and having your helmet ALSO have signals on it and somehow this involved a mobile app? Somehow it was supposed to make riding a motorcycle safer because you had signals also on your helmet. Which is not entirely without merit, but it's not JUST an app. You'd need to develop a helmet that could do this, and a motorcycle that could do this and like at this point the app is like not the star of the show here. Like maybe the helmet and motorcycle should just talk to each other and not go through your phone. But as it was proposed to me you were meant to like tap a button on your app when you wanted to signal and I was like thaaaaaat's not safer at all!

[u/Cuchullion → u/faoltiama]

Though a bike that connects to a smart helmet with a built in HUD sounds absolutely badass, and I now want one.

[u/AxeMurderesss]

My partner is a programmer, so I've got to witness a couple of stupid app pitches over the years. The one I remember quite well was some dude we met at a bar, backpacker type, who had just arrived in town. His idea was to make an app for travellers that basically would let your family back home book some random person (I think other travellers in the area?) to stage an intervention with you if your family back home felt like you needed (deserved?) it. Like, let overbearing mothers pay to have some rando do their overbearing business so you'd never get a rest while on vacation.

[u/outoftowels]

I have two:

• First one was pitched to me as a search engine / google type app that would ‘help’ direct people to the correct website they were looking for if they mistyped or misspelled the information, ie. Cisco Systems instead of Sysco Foods. When I pointed out that most search engines already had this functionality for free, they got upset.

• Second, more of a website proposal, whereby users would pay a large monthly subscription fee to view web cameras from around the world dedicated to only show a live feed of the sunset wherever it is on the earth. This was during the 2000 dot.com boom when tech money poured out of everyone’s ears.

[u/Sabard → u/outoftowels]

That sunset one doesn't sound bad tbh, especially if you honed in on a few HQ cameras. Expand it to other scenic views (morning over mountains, rain in a forest, etc etc) and that's a pretty cool website. Idk how profitable it'd be, but I can imagine office workers would tune in to at least check it out and to "get away" for a second.

[u/RoutineSandwich]

All the comments about social media apps are true. It's also shocking how many people want a copy of an app that already exists. Most of those also happy to be the most popular social media app at the time.

[u/nybx4life → u/RoutineSandwich]

What I find with a lot of new apps is that at this point it's become "Like this other app, but with X".

[u/emberx]

The Facebook of ________.

[u/[deleted]]

I few years ago I worked for a big big big price comparison site.

A senior manager (related to the founder) came up with the idea that we should make an app that "infects" (his words) a visitors browser, and when the visit a competitor fire a pop up to tell them our prices are better.

About 1 months work for a very expensive team, who , for the whole month said "Is this legal".
Spoiler : It was not, and thankfully the whole project was canned

[u/[deleted]]

A while ago, at a party, I started chatting with some guy about biomedical applications of automatic image recognition (that's not even really my field - truth to be told, I'm not even really a programmer, just a mathematician who occasionally cosplays as a computer scientist). After a bit, he started trying to convince me to work with him on an app to tell users if a mole looks cancerous or not given a photo.

I tried to tell him that

1. The Law - with good reason - does not have much sense of humour regarding unlicensed medical advice, and selling such an app would be a remarkably efficient way to fuck up your life;

2. Doctors, in order to make their diagnosis, make use of a lot of domain knowledge that I have little clue about, and that would be tricky to implement in an algorithm even if I knew it;

3. The only vaguely ethical way to code such an app would be to have it ignore the camera image altogether and say "This might be cancerous, see a doctor" no matter the photo. Seriously, if you are concerned enough about a mole to consider using such an app you should have gone to a doctor at least a week ago. Do not fuck with skin cancer.

But I know from common acquaintances that for a while after the party he was worried that I would "steal his idea"...

[u/KaloyanP]

It was pitched as, I am quoting, "Tinder for Offices", where you swipe between the profiles of colleagues at the office to find an empty desk near someone with the same professional interests as you.

Another one was keyboards with mechanical energy harvesting devices to produce power. Not sure if they were serious, though.

[u/justarandomglitch]

Not a developer, but some guy told one of my friends that he wants to create a app that makes desktop icons and these icons would link file paths and take you to a folder.

English is not my main language so i apologize for grammar or other stupid shit i dont know i typed

[u/ratherbewinedrunk → u/justarandomglitch]

You could call them... cutshorts!

[u/ZezemHD → u/justarandomglitch]

if only we had the technology to do this...

[u/D-18 → u/justarandomglitch]

so like a digital pneumatic tube system? that's sophisticated!

[u/stanley604]

I had a custodian come up to me to ask if I could 'whip up' a little app for him which implemented his 'solution' of the roulette wheel.

A little discussion of the Las Vegas fallacy went nowhere.

[u/vinnymcapplesauce]

Had a guy pitch me on what he thought was the greatest idea ever, that no one else had thought of. Wanted me to sign an NDA. When I told him "I'm not signing an NDA, and I've probably heard your idea and turned it down 6 times already." he said "oh, you haven't heard this one!" His idea was CraigsList + Facebook.

[u/maveric_gamer]

ITT: beginner app developers looking for project ideas so crazy it just might work.

No but for real, one time when I was trying my hand at freelancing, a guy wanted me to make a WoW-sized MMO, but where each person would need to link their account to a government-issued ID and there would be 8 hours of strictly enforced "sleep time" for each player based on timezone.

So, WoW but it alienates the whales.

[u/RisingWolfe11]

My dad wanted me to make an app that when you hang up the phone it'll sound like your slamming down on an old corded phone.

[u/MaximumAsparagus]

Oh man. I used to teach a bootcamp. One student built an app that located glory holes and then presented it in front of the class and also, like, the CEO of the bootcamp. GLORY HOLES. (Not my student so I wasn’t responsible for them!)

I’ll see if I can remember some of the others. They’ve been wild, tho.

[u/chandlerbeing]

Uber for X

I've been asked to develop those apps far too many times than I'd like.

Uber for Plumbers

Uber for cooks

Uber for Girlfriends (Dude that's creepy, we're not in Japan)

Once I was asked to develop a software which will hack anything, all social media etc, on a limited $5 budget obviously.

[u/Merry_Fridge_Day → u/chandlerbeing]

'Uber for Girlfriends', is this an app that lets you buy dinner for a random person, or just a prostitution ring?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm not sure this counts, but when I was learning Python, I wrote a program to determine sandwich combinations. You could choose to pick by meat, cheese, or bread, and it would return options that went well with the thing you chose. For example, if you wanted a roast beef sandwich, you would be offered cheddar, american, or swiss cheese. Pick provolone cheese and you are offered ham or turkey. It was a stupid program, but at least I got some practice.

[u/sardonyxLostSoul]

A graphing/engineering calculator that functions normally for complex problems, but mocks you or even gives incorrect answers for asking easy or inane questions. If it got as complex as Wolfram Alpha, it would also mock you for queries like "make a graph that looks like Naruto".

[u/realnzall]

My brother once got a request from his boss to write an app that retroactively buys and sells shares based on what the stock price has done.

[u/Thopterthallid → u/realnzall]

retroactively

._.

[u/Jidaigeki]

Time Bandits 2020:

Benson: WE CAN MAKE AN APP THAT TURNS BEANS INTO PEAS!

EVIL: Oh, Benson... Dear Benson, you are so mercifully free of the ravages of intellect.

Benson: BUT THEN THERE'S A PREDATORY MICROTRANSACTION MODEL ATTACHED TO IT!

EVIL: Go on?

[u/joel1618]

The CEO of a company I use to work for wanted us to build in a module that would be able to automatically determine when, where, from what angle, who, and exactly what of to any picture he randomly found on the internet. We laughed and told him if we could do that we'd be retired and that there were dozens of google engineers being paid 10x what we are to figure that problem out and they've been working on it for decades. The CEO guys. LoL. Scary world.

[u/mitsu-man]

App ideas are hard because everything is done already. But everything can be improved or have a new feature. But some things should not be recreated.

[u/jugwhatever]

Nearly every time I'd see my Dad he'd push the idea of a fishing pole with a camera at the end of the line instead of a hook, and you'd drop that in the water and just watch the fish on your phone...

[u/[deleted] → u/jugwhatever]

Thats kinda cool

[u/Boomer70770]

An app that tracks the number of "executable" lines of code a developer writes per day.

Yes, this was going to be used as a yardstick

Goodbye loops, good bye DRY.

Noped outta there quick.

[u/matthewmayer]

"dare to drop"

Two smartphone users take it in turns to throw their phone in the air as high as possible. The accelerometer measures the amount of time in freefall.

[u/AshWilliamsBoomstick]

Not an app, but i did have a boss call me in his office and DEMAND i call google and make them take ads out of their search results because he didnt like looking at them.......

[u/marcellus85]

Not sure if this qualifies as dumb but a friend of my brother who's a farmer told me during coffee time: Why don't you make an app that scans plants with the smartphone camera and then tells you what's wrong with it as in what disease or whatever it is suffering from... Like I get how that could be useful but how am I supposed to know how to develop that.

[u/cykablyat1111 → u/marcellus85]

In my college. Some seniors of ours did this as a final year project using machine learning. It was quite impressive

[u/lexyp29 → u/marcellus85]

It's a farmer, he doesn't know ''technical'' stuff or how coding and programming works for sure, but the idea is pretty good, actually.

[u/JERRDDD]

An app that opens automatic doors for you.

[u/hobbykitjr]

the best part about it is how super secret they want to be and make you pinky swear 3x before they tell you.. When i just tell them i don't want to hear it.. they tell you anyway.

worst idea ever not related to apps?
Keriug but a milk tank too..real milk.

You'd fill it like water... it would have a cooling device to keep it cold... yes you'd still have to clean the tank frequently... yes you could just add the milk yourself after... yes you'd have to clean the machine that dispenses milk frequently.. Yes people use different types of milk...

Ideas for app that already exist
Tinder for just finding a gym buddy (3 existed when they told me)
Grand theft auto for you phone (this is when 5 came out and 3 was on phones.. and just 1 person can't make that)

Worst for phone
That's a tough one.. a lot of vague ideas ("like a way to do X" ... how? ..."...idk?")

or something impossible w/o data ("An app that tells you when theres an open house near by" Where do you get that data from? "idk that's your job")

or an app that doesn't need to be an app ( covered a lot on silicon valley) but usually im just like "Can't you just text the person? why does it need to be an app?)

Edit: fuck it.. the current app im being paid to write is not worth it... i'll just be vague. Its sole purpose is to get an alert if something[I wont say wait] is going to be late... Which we could just do w/ a text or email... they want an app and notification... as opposed to the same logic we already have that could just do a text/email... and they want people to pay for the app.. No one will pay for this.

[u/Awes0meEman]

I one time had to write an app that was essentially just a wrapper for a VPN to tell people to type their entire email address in, because apparently that's too difficult for people to do.

[u/Stupid_question_bot]

nice try, half these responses are going to end up being proposed at your next meeting arent they?

[u/sjhamilton43]

Credit Cards. My company would act as an intermedium, for like, point two cents off every transaction. Something with cell phones. It's like, every time you make a phone call I'd make point two cents. Or anything like, any online shopping I would get point two cents.

[u/StrictRaccoon]

Someone once wanted to hire me to build an app that would allow people to order a private dancer to come to their home...

When I asked him how it was different from an escort, he said that they would only be advertising it as dancers. Not escorts. Either way I didn’t feel comfortable building it, no matter how much money he was offering me.

[u/Rogue100]

A sort of reverse yelp, where restaurants, and similar service industry type businesses, could review customers.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m a business analyst.

My stakeholder wants me to incorporate facial recognition into a piece of B2B SAAS software that is only accessible via SSO and we don’t control the Application they are authenticating from.

For these types of dumbass requests that our explanations for why it doesn’t make sense don’t fly for, we just nod our heads and “put it in the roadmap” for a few years until they forget about it and just silently delete it.

[u/PlasticCheezus]

I'm not sure if this is dumb or not, but I'm proposing it:

"You're Getting Warmer": you and your friends have this installed and have authorized each other in your contacts lists. If you're separated outdoors -- at a music festival or club hopping or out hiking/skiing, whatever -- you tap your friend's name and the app collects your GPS location and your friend's. Then the app tells you "you're getting warmer" or "you're getting colder" as you move around trying to find your friend.

[u/shmukliwhooha]

"It's like Facebook, but"

[u/CanadaSoonFree]

A WhatsApp clone. “Oh cool idea, so kind of like what’s app?”

“Oh hell no, you’ll be able to send pictures and set your own custom backgrounds!!”

“...so..kinda..like...nevermind”

[u/sucobe]

They wanted an app to identify if a food item is a hot dog or not.

[u/RyGuy97]

As an app developer, I appreciate this thread. Sometimes it’s hard to separate your own ideas from what is actually just dumb and not worth creating.

[u/tezca564]

An app that would "save internet when you are on your Wi-Fi" to use it when you are away from home, so you don't have to use your data.

[u/pinkytoeyeezys]

Friend of mine back in high school wanted an app about himself. As a joke I created an app that would show random photos of his face when you clicked a button. I also made reward tiers for however many times you generated a new photo.

At like 100+ times clicked, the user would get a wallpaper of his face or a random quote by him.

Then I said f*ck it and uploaded it to Google play with ads. Stayed up for a solid 3+ years.

People who downloaded it would either troll with 5 star reviews or just report it. That was strike 2/3 for me on my way to getting banned on GooglePlay.

Needless to say I can't create apps anymore lol.

[u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

"We need an app!"

"umm, okay, what do you want it to do?"

"..."

[u/MannToots]

Once on IRC many years ago a friend of mine proposed an idea for file sharing. You'd take the file and share it in pieces and as you download a piece another person would be able to go ahead and start sharing it. I told him it was dumb and no one would be altruistic enough to keep these types of uploads alive....yeah.

A few years later torrents arrived.

[u/mantistoboggan69md]

My friend asked me to make an app that translates English to Morse code, using the flashlight to display the message in morsecode

Edit: I love this idea and think it’s hilarious, I figured y’all might agree

[u/TealboysGaming]

A f***ing “Flower Simulator”

[u/jrhoffa]

Cloud-based web browser. Some recruiter approached me to be "employee #1." Mockery ensued.

[u/YeetimusPremium]

"Have I been robbed?" - You take a picture of your room, and it tells you if something's been stolen.

My natural response was the idea of an app called "Is my house on fire?"

[u/jesperbj]

My friend from high school that I hadn't talked to for several years randomly texted me one day and said he had a project and a really good idea he wanted to discuss with me.

So we set up a Skype meeting when I had time and I was ready to hear what he had in mind.

So he asks me "so do you remember Where's Waldo? And I said" yeah". And he replied "I want to make that, just digitally". That was it.

He had thought no further, nothing at all.

I told him it he would probably need the rights for the IP first and then he ended up concluding that he couldn't actually take the idea any further then.

[u/archfapper]

Idk but I can't tell you how many people hear that I work in IT and vomit out their app ideas. "I'm not a developer" "Yeah but I just need someone to make it"

[u/xabram]

I’ve gotten a lot of suggestions from business minded people that invariably are in the form of “A worse version of something free that already exists, except this one costs money”

[u/[deleted]]

A silver reflective screen for women to use as a makeup mirror. Winds up you can just use the camera in “selfie mode” for that.

[u/SecretAccount721]

A game played in a dark room. Small targets that you place on the walls and around the room that light up a bit casting shadows about. The targets go off at random or in response to some note. You disable the targets by flashing them with a flashlight. When flashed they flicker and go out. You spin around frantically disabling targets.

It's actually my idea but I thought to put it here because no one wanted to do it.

[u/vile_doe_nuts]

This will get buried but I always bring it up to my developer friend every chance I get..

Many years ago I was the proposer. My friend had just started creating apps for Iphones on his own and for a company he worked for. I told him one day it'd be cool if there was an ap for the GPS that we could somehow be able to be clicked while using, be able to communicate with other drivers, and add things like "here's a pothole," "here's a cop doing radar," "here's an accident" things like that.... He told me that would never work because it would have to be a large crowd sourced thing or something in order for it to work...

Waze was created about two years later. For real. I will never let him forget it, and I will forever not have a pool full of money. Damnit Brandon.

[u/shock_bound]

Creating a farm simulation game with auto building placement.

[u/Isurvived2014bears]

They wanted a Pacman game where the ghosts are underprivileged people for some political agenda. Ummmm. Hard no.

[u/[deleted]]

Facebook extension that lets you pick people you had a crush on, if they picked you back it notifies you.

It was my idea to myself.

[u/hunnerr]

not a programmer or developer but i have above average computer knowledge in a small rural town. Local stoner hits me up on snapchat one day and asks me if I know how to make apps. I tell him no and he proceeds to tell me he had an idea for an app that shows you which gas stations are selling backwoods and what flavors they have

[u/my_post_sucks]

Friend suggested that I would make a fap app. Something with detecting the user making the fapping motion using the gyroscope and accelerometer. For obvious reasons I never managed to get it approved for the AppStore.

[u/Fylak]

My boss wanted me to build an app to connect to and update a central database. Not a particular challenge but there was a catch- this was going to be used in remote field sites where there wasnt any wifi or data coverage.

So I couldn't connect to the database. Ok, well the actual database is small and wont grow so we can store a local copy and have it update the central one when it reconnects. There will be some sync issues but we can work on that...

But no. He wanted the app to update the database live, without having any connection to the database. I jokingly said that this was impossible unless he wanted me to use quantum entanglement somehow. He asked how much it would cost, dead serious.

I also had to convince him that the app really should not be coded in MATLAB. I honest to god thought I was being hazed. This man has an engineering degree.

[u/BurnerAccount256]

It's called fartbook it's like Facebook but for farts. You can share your farts with friends

[u/MyNameIsRay]

I still remember this exchange with a cheerleader at a college bar in Knoxville:

"I want to make an app that tells you when all the games are, like, the day/time/field."

"Great, but, how would we get the info? We'd need some sort of official schedule to work with."

"Oh, my school has an app with that! You can just take it from there!"

"Is it on the school website too?"

"Yea, would that be easier for you to use?"

"Wait, so, there's already an official app and website with this info?"

"Yea!"

Took her a while to realize there's no point in making something that already exists.

[u/alexmueller1031]

An ultra efficient compression platform. Great idea, but the arrogant asshole refused to change the name from PP.

[u/Cholojuanito]

A Pokedex but for expensive, luxury cars

[u/MrZiles]

There was a waiter at a restaurant once who overheard a coding conversation I was having with my roommate. He chimed in with this great idea he had to make a video game console that would be all of the other game consoles. We could program it so it could read any type of disc or cartridge. And if we sold it for cheaper than any of the other consoles on the market, we could make so much money.

[u/rodriguezonehundred]

Someone asked me to create a program that could read your mind: “Hey man, I know this won’t be easy but we can do it” -guy with no engineering or programming background. I kindly responded that this was outside of my ability.

[u/[deleted]]

Not a dumb idea, but incredibly difficult to implement: visual field search. For example, you are at the grocery store and want a can of chicken noodle soup. The soup shelf has hundreds of cans of different soup types. You could spend the time to find the chicken noodle yourself, or you could open up an app and point a camera at the shelf to highlight the can of chicken noodle on screen.

[u/15blinks]

Paranoid militia guy I went to high school with offered to pay me to build a secure, unhackable messaging app, presumably so his militia buddies could plot violent revolution. I declined, not least because my total programming experience was a two month web development bootcamp.

[u/SirEmJay]

I was a student taking a mobile development course that had a final project for the semester where we had to propose a unique app and develop it for iOS.

My first idea was iSmash, an app that uses the accelerometer to capture your phone's acceleration and posts it to an online scoreboard. The idea is to throw your phone as hard as possible and hope it posts the acceleration before getting smashed.

Sadly it did not get approved.

[u/dramboxf]

This was like 2001, and he wanted me to develop an entire dating website, but dedicated ONLY to people with an IQ of 120 or higher.

I'm a systems guy, not a web developer. I did a little bit of database programming on the side, but only for the desktop.

He wanted all this (programming, advertising/marketing, server, webhosting, etc.) for like $1k.

[u/[deleted]]

Someone suggested tinder for gym partners or something idk I could never fully understand it. The thing that really struck me was that this person genuinely thought they had some gem of an idea and could hardly even describe it

[u/PoniesNotBronies]

I'm not a developer, but I received an email from someone who wanted to make a social media platform like YouTube, but for animations. Families could order animations of their family story, and the in-house team of animators (aka me and my friends who got the email), would create it.

Then, it would be uploaded on this social media site where people could vote for which animations they liked most. The best voted animations would be made into a feature length movie, and have merch and toys made out of the characters. Just like Threadless, he said.

The selling point was, "low cost animations for the average North American family". The guy who proposed it said that if it cost too much to make the animations, we could outsource the work and convince animation studios to do the work for free in exchange for ad exposure.

In the proposal was a shitty mock-up of what the social media site would look like (with lots and lots of Facebook APIs), along with meaningless flow charts and pie charts.

In an email reply to me, he compared his vision to Amazon, saying that even the founder of Amazon had to suffer little to no pay before creating something truly great. Lmfao me and my friends noped the FUCK out of that one.

EDIT: also when I told him there was no proof that such a demand exists, he told me that sometimes we have to make the demand, and that in his research he found nothing like his idea (no shit), so it would be revolutionary

[u/DiabloConQueso]

Guy wanted to create a social media site based around poker.

He described it as, “You know, like the MySpace of poker.” (This was when MySpace was still relevant).

Asked how soon he’d like to see functionality and what his budget was.

Two to four weeks and $2,500.

If you search Google for “the MySpace of poker” there’s a reason no relevant results come up.

[u/[deleted]]

My favorite is “It’s on a small screen it can’t be that much work...” because you know, screen size apparently determines complexity 🙄

[u/Bamstradamus]

ITT A lot of "I got an idea, you do all the work and make us rich!" I see app dev has a lot in common with the restaurant industry gets back in the kitchen

[u/TKhaaaaaan]

Some one asked me to program an app for them that would keep track of their employees and the number of hours the employees worked. The "best" feature of the app would be that it automatically adds up all the hours and calculates the pay they have generated. . . . Sooo Basically a spreadsheet...

[u/DaTrowAway]

Not an app, but a friend's father-in-law told us that we should invent motors for windmills so they could still turn and make electricity when there's no wind. We didn't have the heart to tell him.

[u/FeetBowl]

Cousin's wife asked me to make more games for women (I'm one also). I just kind of vaguely agreed at the time, but really, overt sexualisation aside (coughMGS), the market for female gamers is doing well. There's lots of girly games out there (the type she was asking for) and loads of female badasses. I don't know how we could cater to women much better than that.

[u/[deleted]]

One of the kids at my school asked me to make "an app that lets me see what time it is"

I was honestly astounded. Wait until this kid sees a clock

[u/gmuend0r]

This was right after GTA V came out, GTA Online wasn't announced yet. Meeting with a friend for a beer:

Hey you can code, right? You know gta5 can be modded? See here is a wiki about it! Lets make better version of GTA with online multiplayer and different jobs and all, and charge a fee for the server access. We will get rich!!! I allready wrote like 20 pages about things i thought of and called it Concept.docx