Big Red Line

Inspiration

I was inspired from reading the book Endurance years, by Scott Kelly, where he mentions a big red line moving across the tasks that the astronauts need to accomplish in their day. My program would mimic that.

What it does

Users would be able to add tasks and see a red line progress across the screen as the day went on. However, I didn’t really get to that point in this time-frame. In actuality, users may open a window, click a button to see some error messages, and read some hard coded values for a day's date and the values a Task holds.

How I built it

I spent most of the first half of the hackathon following tutorials and reading to learn the basics of win32 API GUI. Then I worked on getting the Days and Tasks written up, lastly I began to implement scheduling through a calendar.

Challenges I ran into

I have never made an application that was more than text in a console. This was a big challenge for me throughout the whole project. I also haven't written any substantial C++ programs for over two years. It took some time to get back into the mindset.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of taking the initiative to even sign up for this. Usually I shy away from competitions and things that really challenge me. I think I did well in that regard.

What I learned

I learned some of the basics of making a program have something to look at. I hope that by getting my foot in the door with GUIs I might now feel confident enough to start some other projects that I had been putting off for a long time.

What's next for Big Red Line

I don't know if Big Red Line has much of a future since it's not particularly unique. But I think that by working on it I will take some new skills and motivation into the future.

Built With

• c++
• visual-studio
• win32