Tell HN: Idea: Time-tracking Code Editor

[jmonegro]

I'm building a little app, and whenever I'm doing this kind of stuff, I like to know how long it took me to develop it - not days, but work hours.

At first I thought I'd use one of the online time trackers, but the problem is that I might forget to hit the "stop" button whenever I'm not coding. It would be useful to have a code editor or a plugin to an existing one that records the time you were actually working. And, when you stop using the application, or minimize it, it stops counting.

Granted, there are a few flaws. For instance, if I momentarily go StackOverflow to ask a question relative to my project, some might want to include that into their dev time. However, this wouldn't be recorded in the timer if the editor is closed or minimized.

I was wondering what HN thought of this idea, and if someone might want to develop it further :) I'm afraid I'm not much of a desktop programmer, at least not to the level of writing a code editor.

[teuobk]

I'm a fan of ManicTime on Windows. It does a great job of tracking how much time each app is active (i.e., has focus). I have rules set up so that it aggregates the time I spend with things like a terminal or IDE open as "work" time and things like VLC as "fun" time.

It also has the ability to track which web pages are being viewed while the browser is active, but I haven't figured out a good way of classifying work pages versus fun pages.

Free download at http://www.manictime.com/

[Tichy]

Couldn't it be done with the log files of your versioning system? Problem is maybe to know when you started. Maybe if you used git so as to always branch for new features, it would work.

[drewp → Tichy]

Actually I'd like to see the per-line editing time combined with the VCS logs. Which lines contributed to the most bugs? What lines do people have to refer to the most when they're making patches? Are there parts of the code that people work more slowly in?

[jcapote]

org-mode for emacs has a timer you could use for this purpose.

[abugosh → jcapote]

I use org-mode for doing this type of time tracking and... Well. Tracking just about everything else too.

http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html provides a real good guide to org-mode and using the time tracking functionality.

[alnayyir → abugosh]

Why does it not surprise me that emacs has this feature already?

[daleharvey]

rescuetime is quite good for that type of thing, last time I used it it didnt quite have project integration but it was working on it

annoyingly for me it sucks on linux though

[jmonegro → daleharvey]

I had used rescuetime in the past, but not for project tracking. I logged back in right now after 8 months of inactivity, and, behold, they implemented project tracking yesterday.

Edit: Actually, it's a new, stand alone, product or something. http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/11/13/rescuetime-for-project...

[daleharvey → jmonegro]

heh good timing

that doesnt look quite like I wanted though, I was hoping to be able to say if I am editing files in x folder, its for y project, and so on, similiar to how firefox url segmenting works, I imagine the api would allow this type of integration already though.

one day I hope I get some time to work on the linux rescuetime, its an awesome product but the current build is just too much hassle and breaks all the time

[listic → daleharvey]

> firefox url segmenting

what is that?

[daleharvey → listic]

tagging is probably a better term, rescuetime shows your your untagged but visited urls and lets you tag them and place them in categories.

[DenisM → jmonegro]

Ahem. Tony, I was ready to explore the pricing section but there is no such link in that blog post. Might want to fix that.

[Aegean]

I wouldn't track my time with it because the time I have the editor open is the trivial period of time when I reflect all that I have designed into code.

[stingraycharles → Aegean]

Just because not all the time spent developing an application is spent on coding, doesn't mean it's not relevant to know how much time you spent on coding.

[thingie]

What about arbtt? http://hackage.haskell.org/package/arbtt

The way it works is superior to most other trackers, as you don't have to care about anything. It's only "flaw" is that it polls only every X seconds, so if you switch the window for less than X, it won't get recorded.

[pg]

Etherpad might be close.

[matthewcford]

check out http://lapsusapp.co.uk seems to keep track of time of textmate edits plus more (not affiliated with it but the author of the app did tweet me a few times, seems to be targeting RoR devs).

[enduser]

cf. the Unix philosophy. vim and timed both work nicely.