I've been a huge proponent of ALWAYS writing software just for yourself. But I'm also a fan of releasing that software.
I have a couple notable stories about that:
I had a friend that wanted to scan his album cover, and I'd always wanted a scanner, so I bought one and wrote some command-line software to do it. Then I applied that as an extension to the venerable Xv image software. Wrote it entirely for myself, ended up selling something like a thousand copies of it.
Recently, I was tired of Spotify so I wrote a Python program to export my playlists into YouTubeMusic. Released it on Github and it now is by far my most-starred project, I figure it's helped at least a thousand people move away from Spotify, I've had a bunch of contributions to it and have had several people throw money my way.
I have a couple notable stories about that:
I had a friend that wanted to scan his album cover, and I'd always wanted a scanner, so I bought one and wrote some command-line software to do it. Then I applied that as an extension to the venerable Xv image software. Wrote it entirely for myself, ended up selling something like a thousand copies of it.
Recently, I was tired of Spotify so I wrote a Python program to export my playlists into YouTubeMusic. Released it on Github and it now is by far my most-starred project, I figure it's helped at least a thousand people move away from Spotify, I've had a bunch of contributions to it and have had several people throw money my way.
Write for yourself, give to the world.