Solstice Scheduler

A notification showing the user they have completed a task on their schedule

The Solstice Scheduler

I was inspired by the hackathon theme of "working from home." I thought to myself about how it is difficult for me to plan out my time when I have remote learning and have to work on school from home. Because of this, I decided to create a scheduling program.

This program allows the user to create a schedule (a list of tasks and blocks of time set aside for them) so that they can plan out their time. The program also checks to suggest the user add a break to their schedule if they have been studying for a particularly long amount of time. This is based on user input, as the user is asked at the beginning of the program how long they would like to work before taking breaks. Once the user has added all their tasks to their list, they are given the option to edit, delete, or add tasks anywhere within the list. Once they confirm their schedule, the program starts a series of timers and gives them the time they planned out to perform the tasks they wanted to do.

I built the program entirely in Python. Python is the programming language I know the best, but I would still consider myself a beginner at it. The program itself is relatively simple and uses few external modules, but the challenges came when I faced the limitations of my knowledge in Python. This frequently caused me to encounter bugs in my code, and I often had to remove them, especially as I was working on the later parts of my project. In addition, I did not know all of the python I needed to know for my project, so at times, I had to search how to code a certain task, such as editing an item in a list.

Despite the challenges I faced, I'm proud of myself for being able to create the finished project. I wrote several hundred lines of code, and I have not written a program with so much code before, let alone written that many lines of code in a 24-hour period. I'm especially proud of finding how to code the program to create desktop notifications in Windows 10 using a Python module. It makes my project seem more like a real application! Overall, I learned more about the code used in Python. I learned about how to program different tasks to tell Python to do, and I learned more about the usages of functions in Python (because I used a lot of functions to help organize the flow of code in my program).

If I had more time to work on my project, I would have created more functions to make it more user friendly. For example, after the timer for one task finishes, I could have added a way for the user to check and possibly edit the schedule again. However, what I hope to be able to improve upon the most is the appearance of the application. Currently, I don't have the programming knowledge to make the program look more like a polished application. However, I hope to learn more about other programming languages to make it look more polished, such as by making the schedule appear as a chart rather than a typed list.