Pomodoro

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  Example invocation

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  Slack description block

What it does

The Pomodoro method is a strategy for avoiding mental fatigue while working for long periods of time. Normally, you set a timer for about 25 minutes, work hard, and then get a break for 3-5 minutes. Wouldn't it be great if a whole dev team could do pomodoros and be able to see who is doing them and much longer the pomodoro will be?

The pomo bot allows you to do just that.

pomo supports a few commands:

• *start* starts a new 20 minute timer. pomo will send you a message when the timer's up.
• *end* ends the 20 minute timer if there was one.
• *status* checks the status of your Do Not Disturb
• *team* checks the status of your entire team's Do Not Disturbs

How I built it

My uncle wrote the Clojure to Slack framework. I used this and modified his implementation "lunch-bot" to hack together basic access to Slack.

Clojure is a functional lisp which has considerable support for concurrency. The timers are implemented by the bot itself, using java Futures.

Challenges I ran into

The Slack API does not allow for a bot to modify someone's Do Not Disturb settings, which was a major want in the original planning of this idea.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I did not know how to use Clojure concurrently before this, and concurrency is hard.

What I learned

• The Slack API is hard
• Clojure is hard
• Concurrency is hard

What's next for Pomodoro

• becoming a "Slack App"
• official Slack development
• access to control of Do Not Disturb features (if Slack will let me)

Built With

• clojure