u/Famous_DyaDya

I’m curious what pushed other people here to build their own Chrome extensions.

For me, it started with music. I listen to a lot of different genres, especially rock and metal, and the volume difference between tracks can be annoying. Some older recordings are much quieter, some newer or more mainstream tracks are much louder, and I constantly felt like I had to adjust the volume manually.

That was the first reason I started building my extension, Melomanica. The idea was to make YouTube Music feel more like a real desktop music player: audio control, sound normalization, EQ presets, and a few playback tools.

Then the project slowly grew. Since I also play guitar, I added things that are useful for practice, like A-B looping and pitch-related controls. I also experimented with skipping parts of videos and saving favorite moments, because I wanted more control over how I use YouTube and YouTube Music.

The name is obviously inspired by Metallica. I just liked the sound of it.

So now I’m interested: what was the original problem or frustration that made you start building your extension?

I'm currently building several software projects, mostly desktop apps and backend/SaaS-style systems, and I want to understand architecture beyond just writing code that works.

There are many architecture patterns and styles: layered architecture, MVC, hexagonal architecture, clean architecture, event-driven architecture, microservices, modular monoliths, and others.

For people who have worked with real systems:

• Which architecture patterns do you use most often?
• Which ones are actually useful in practice?
• Which ones are overused or misunderstood?
• What should a self-taught developer focus on first?

I'm not looking for a theoretical list. I want to understand what matters when building maintainable software in the real world.