Task Time Tracker

A tool to keep track of the time spent on tasks.

Why use it?

Why not? Besides, you'll be able to create, duplicate, move, rename, archive, restore and delete tasks at the distance of one (or two) key stroke(s). You'll also be able to edit the time spent on a task by adding, subtracting or setting the time you want. But that's not all!

With the Track'n'Close technology, you won't need to keep the app always open. Once you start tracking time for a task, the app will keep track of it, even if you close it.

Count seconds, minutes, hours, days, and even years... all the way up to infinity* thanks to the not-so-new technology of 64 bit integers.

Be amazed by the compact interface that automatically adapts the time representations while maximizing the displayed precision.

Cleanup the workspace by moving your finished tasks to the archive. Want to bring back some archived tasks? No problem, just switch into the archive view and restore them.

Ever felt like your data is being held hostage? Not anymore! Import and export your tasks using the widely supported CSV text file format.

And if you don't like what you're seeing, this is your lucky day! Because you have access to the source code, you can adapt it to your needs!

Task Time Tracker - You may not need it, but I enjoyed making it!

* Although the app cannot count to infinity, it surely displays it (∞) if the time goes to 9999.5 years or above. Also, it will display a minus (-) if you force a time to have negative values.

Why create such tool?

I like to keep track of the time spent on my daily job's tasks. It helps me be aware of time pits, and improve my time estimates. This motivated me to search for a simple app that allowed to take measurements without too much effort.

After skimming through all cloud-based and too-complex apps, I eventually landed on some text-based user interface (TUI) apps. The one that almost convinced me was worklog, but I just couldn't come to terms with its interface.

So, after spending more time than I'd like to admit searching for a task time tracker, I decided to take matters on my own hands. Maybe I just needed to improve my search-fu. Maybe it was just an excuse to write some code. Either way, I wasn't turning back.

Why use C and ncurses?

I've been looking for an excuse to revisit C, which I haven't used for more than a decade, and this seemed like a good opportunity: a simple app with a small set of features. But how would I build the user interface? I didn't want to learn an advanced toolkit just for this small project, and since the TUI apps had somehow resonated with me, I decided to try out the ncurses library which has been surviving the test of time.

Because this was an hobby project focused in exploring C and its standard library, I allowed myself to obsess with whatever details I wanted to. This serves to justify the lousy code, and explains the fun I had.

Overall, it was a satisfying experience with occasional moments of frustration whenever "string" manipulations were required. And now that the first part is completed the best part begins: let's try to implement it in Jai and get some hands-on experience of how the two compare. See you on the other side. 🖖