TickingFocus

Whenever I start working on a new application, I jump back into the tools I am most familiar with, which are React, Typescript, and everything web-related.

But if you want to create an application that stays always visible on your user's screen, you need to distribute a native application. Something that will run directly on your user machine, not through a web browser.

This is why Electron was an obvious move at the time. It was easy to move my web-based workflows to a "regular" macOS application.

But Electron is heavy, it's hard to publish on the app store, and it's brittle in my experience. It's hard to keep your build functional with so many layers of abstraction. And Apple, let's be honest, is actively pushing back on these sorts of tech.

My experience with Electron:

• A few hours building an application in Electron,
• 3 days of trying to release it on the App Store, unsuccessfully -- brittle notarization, private APIs used by electron are rejected, etc.
• 1 day trying to upgrade electron everytime I go back to the repo.

I moved to a Swift and SwiftUI application. It took some time to get familiar with the tooling (thanks, ChatGPT), but the application is live again as a real, fast, lean, truly native macOS application. It's 100 times more efficient now.

My lesson is:

• If you are building a simple app, without any sort of interop with web-based services.
• If you don't care about multiplatform or reusing components built by a dozen different teams

The time you'll spend learning how to use Apple's native tooling is smaller than what you'll lose messing around with Electron, Notarization, Building, Packaging, etc.

I just finished rewriting the landing: https://tickingfocus.com/

I've used Hugo and Bulma. I'm getting the gist of Bulma, but the library looks "abandoned" now. Waiting for bootstrap 5 to move out.

The website's copy: I wrote for myself. I wrote things that I care about, and I'll try to validate this with some paid ads.

I'm VERY impressed by the Gumroad integration, it was super easy to install: just add the script line. Now all my links to Gumroad triggers an embed paiement form. Shockingly simple.

Up until now I've always worked for someone else, and I'm sort of scared at the idea of selling my own product online.

• "What if everyone thinks it's crap?"

So creating the gumroad page and setting a price for what I wrote is a big deal for me. Next steps: talking about it, having people try it out, and grow.

I like the open learn and the build in public trends. I want to contribute to this by building one of my application in public.

It's a Pomodoro timer that solves a very precise problem for me:

The Pomodoro Method tells you that you should have a physical "tomato clock" by your side. It should be in your field of view as a reminder. Something to remember your subconscious you are in working mode.

No timer works that way. So I built mine. It ha to be beautiful, "zen", and minimalist.