Serhii Drahan

An application like Forest for turning off the computer on time — I won’t be making it.

But I still gained experience. Now I can look at the mistakes:

Jumped into development without planning. “Well, it’s such a simple project. I’ll just write code and clarify things along the way.” Yes, I quickly and enthusiastically created an empty project and a couple of models. But then I’d sit down at the computer at nine in the evening, open Xcode, and shuffle two lines of code back and forth.

Got attached to a technical solution. Later it turned out that it didn’t fit the task, but because I liked it, I kept stubbornly trying to use it.

So how did I reason? The virtual tree should become sad if the user overstayed and shut down the computer after 10:00 PM. So, the computer needs to be shut down before that. I wrote code that monitors system events to catch the moment the computer is turned off. Started thinking about nuances: What if the battery dies? What if the application didn’t have time to save the shutdown time? What if…

But in reality, it’s simpler: every minute, check the system clock. Is it already 10:00 PM? If yes: Has today already been marked as “failed”? No? Then we draw a withered tree and don’t worry about it anymore today. That’s it!

Took on a completely new stack. Instead of one unclear task — making the application itself—I ended up with two: make the application and figure out macOS development.

Overall, I quickly lost interest in the idea. It turned out that I can shut down the computer on time without gamification — I just needed to figure out what I was missing during the day that made me stare at the screen at night.

Idea: A desktop application that reminds you to shut down your computer in the evening.

Why: I often get glued to my computer in the evenings. Not doing anything important, just mindlessly browsing useless sites instead of taking a shower and going to sleep.

What it will have: Simple gamification in the spirit of Forest — if you shut down your computer before 9:45 PM, a little tree grows or something like that. The longer you delay the deadline, the worse your tree becomes (or whatever it will be).

Similar projects: I’m deliberately not looking them up. Every time I get the idea to make a small project to try out, I start by looking at alternatives, and after an hour, I find myself thinking, “Who needs your little creation when there are so many better alternatives?” But I’m not aiming to earn a million — just to make a finished small project, from idea to release. And it doesn’t matter if I don’t earn a single cent from it — that’s not the point right now.