Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
18f.gsa.gov
Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#2Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new.
What I want is a product that tracks my time for me. WakaTime is probably the closest I've seen. If only it worked outside of my text editor and automatically submitted my timesheets for me. I'm supposed to submit timesheets weekly, I probably do it closer to monthly (and I know I'm not the only one). I have enough trouble remembering what I did yesterday, let alone last month.
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#3Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new. What I want is a product that tracks my time for me. WakaTime is probably the closest I've seen. If only it worked outside of my text editor and automatically submitted my timesheets f…
There are a lot of tools in that space, if you can bear the privacy implications. The one I used in the past was RescueTime (https://www.rescuetime.com/).
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#4Love the callout to the Chosen.js library...one of those fantastic plug-and-play interface libraries that makes it so less painful to add a nearly essential feature to forms/data-selection.
edit: Added clickable link to chosen.js homepage
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#5Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new. What I want is a product that tracks my time for me. WakaTime is probably the closest I've seen. If only it worked outside of my text editor and automatically submitted my timesheets f…
> Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new.
I think that's because nobody provides enough hooks in enough different places to make something work for everyone. I'd call it the SAP problem. First you spend $3mm buying it and then you spend another $20mm customizing it.
Once the assumptions about how something will work are baked in, it's very difficult to change the database schema without breaking everything, and writing a translation layer on top of it is probably more work that it's worth.
A truly universal time tracking app would take a few years and a few million to develop properly so that it can be extended and changed and customized and by the time you've supported a million different use-cases it would have been easier for a dozen different people to write their own.
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#6Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new. What I want is a product that tracks my time for me. WakaTime is probably the closest I've seen. If only it worked outside of my text editor and automatically submitted my timesheets f…
There are a lot of tools in that space, if you can bear the privacy implications. The one I used in the past was RescueTime ( https://www.rescuetime.com/ ).
I'm currently using Timing.app. The only complaint (aside from some apps not being properly supported) I have is that there's no way to track across machines. I'm currently exporting and merging the data which is probably the best solution anyway.
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#7I'm surprised that they developed a brand new time tracking tool. From my limited experience, it seems Deltek Time & Expense is the most popular time tracking application in the government / associated contractor space.
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#8Love the callout to the Chosen.js library...one of those fantastic plug-and-play interface libraries that makes it so less painful to add a nearly essential feature to forms/data-selection. edit: Added clickable link to chosen.js homepage http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/
Man, that is nice. Oh the hours I've spent on that...
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#9Time tracking is one of those things that I see constantly being reinvented. Whether it's spreadsheets that get emailed, completely custom solutions, or one of the numerous services available, few of them actually provide anything new. What I want is a product that tracks my time for me. WakaTime is probably the closest I've seen. If only it worked outside of my text editor and automatically submitted my timesheets f…
For a long time I used Emacs and org-mode for this purpose: It can track time when visiting buffers, so I simply needed to assign projects to buffers (most of the time).
Re: Show HN: Tock, a Time Tracking Tool by 18F
#10I'm surprised that they developed a brand new time tracking tool. From my limited experience, it seems Deltek Time & Expense is the most popular time tracking application in the government / associated contractor space.
Given that there is no download link or price, I'm going to assume that 18F is not the kind of place that was going to pay top dollar for a cruddy, expensive third party service.