The Programmer's Data Has No Repository

Tags: habits

“The cobbler’s children have no shoes.”

I’ve tracked various habits and metrics about myself since 2009 in a spreadsheet. Perfect example of using a hack to get started rather than fretting over a system and procrastinating, but I started to yearn for a bit more flexibility and automation.

Don’t judge me for tracking my flossing activity. Did you floss every day this week? Do judge me for not exercising. My barbell is four feet away, and I have endless miles of sidewalk to run on. There is no excuse.

I looked up open source solutions to the problem because I want to be in control of my data. I don’t want it on my phone or in the cloud with no backup or export functionality. That’s what pushed me into the spreadsheet in the first place.

HabitRPG was near the top of the list, but the links were to a hosted app and a Kickstarter campaign, so I assumed it was proprietary. It is not. It’s an open business that has code and business direction discussions out in public on github.

Oh, and there’s an API.

I’ll be playing with this one for a while to see if I can finally give my spreadsheet some rest.