Tantalus and his pommes
2 minute read
I thought yesterday about making an app for my computer. I was frustrated at how all the pomodoro apps rely on sounds that I find annoying, and they take up too much space on the screen or try to do too much. I wanted one that was like a little window in the corner of my screen, it could just give me a visual buzz when it's time to change modes.
How hard could that be, really? A simple timer, a handful of states, some text. I could whip that up in an hour or two, surely. It's just within my reach.
Grasping the fruit
At this point I've spent 6 hours 26 minutes on Pompom, far more than I intended. Dev projects are dangerous like this, in your mind it's a spotless plane, not a drop of complexity hide nor hair. But there is, hidden in everything, the reality of the world.
I have, in fact, built it to a point that it's usable, and I'm using it right now.
In brief:
- It cycles between 8 rounds of rest and focus
- A click starts and pauses it
- At the end of each round the app animates by cycling through blocks of colours, as a passive way to show that the round is up.
- It supports themes, according to Hundred Rabbits theme format
- 'r' to reset
- 't' to toggle the animation (for theme testing)
Tech:
- wails.io
- Preact
Todo:
- Tidy up styling
- See if I can't write a cleaner one without Preact
- Support custom round lengths and titles
- Tighten up design
- Create more comprehensive debugging tools
- Write some tests
- Build for other platforms
- Add licensing
- Make sure icons all work correctly
- Build homepage
- Share with people
- bug - cursor doesn't change in final build
- bug - on build it was still showing the wails.io icon
Questions to follow up
- How do people usually debug ui stuff?
- How do I write effective tests for F/E?
- Can I make this more 'functional'?
The most important thing is not to touch it for a week, I don't want to get sucked into another 6 hour vortex.
what else?
- Didn't sleep much again last night, though I think I know why this time.
- It's bloody hot lately, the penthouse is absolutely cooking
listening to
questions
- How can I practice taking a step back when I fall into a programming hole?
- Is this something that happens for other things too?