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.
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