State of the BudgetBudget

[Xiphe]

Hey Everybody.

Since I still use this project myself often, and some of you find it useful enough to sponsor me here on Github
(💜 @greyestapps @ghabiger @skempken @netgitdom) I feel like I should give an update.

TL;DR: I've lost motivation but not interest.

1. Most impactful is that I currently struggle with mental health and therefore have cut down on things that felt like a burden and am doing more stuff that spark joy in the moment. BudgetBudget had felt more like a burden in the past 2 years.
2. That is partly because I tried to completely redo the onboarding when I last worked on the project and kinda failed to met my own expectations which lead to a situation where I was not motivated to continue working on the onboarding but it felt wrong to work on the project and discarding my onboarding stuff.
3. Also I've integrated an early preview of react@18 and it took the react team much longer than expected to stabilise the release (was released ~3 months ago). So I felt blocked by react - It was a bad choice to jump on the pre-release train but it also felt wrong to jump of it now that the project was on it leading to a dead-lock.
4. Last but not least: Earlier this year I realised that Ideally this App would be a native swift app and not electron. It's only electron because I'm most fluent in JavaScript but for the most part I've been reinventing the wheel to make this look and feel like a MacOS app. So I started learning swift, even motivated a dear friend of mine to do this together with me. But until now I don't fell like I know enough of the native programming environment to build an application that is mostly concerned with our financial data.

Yeah. So this is where we are. I still use the current state of the app a lot and whenever I open it I feel bad for not continuing work. But I also feel unable to make the decisions required for me to work on this.

If you have any input on this please let me know. And thank you for staying with me, the feedback and for being kind humans!

[diktomat]

Thank you for posting this update and I hope you can get back on track soon, health obviously is most important of all. Please don't feel bad for not working on it as long as it sparks no joy!

Regarding 4., please publish this early if you ever get around to following this through. I'd love to have this and even more I'd love to help with this: Though I don't have much more experience with Swift than with JS, I've always wanted to get better at Swift and have more fun writing it.

[leo-benz]

First of all: BudgetBudget is a great app and I use it at least once a week. It is great in its current state and there is no pressure for changing anything. I know the feeling of being stuck on a project and needing some distance, especially when there are some big never ending tasks…

I wanted to contribute more to this project but I am not really familiar with JS/TypeScript and I don’t have much motivation for diving into it. I also thought sometimes to rewrite it myself in Swift(UI). I have some experience with it but haven’t finished any project with it yet. A great starting point is the free Stanford CS193p course. This years WWDC has also brought several enhancements that perfectly complement a SwiftUI port of BudgetBudget (Swift Charts, Grid & Custom Layouts) A SwiftUI port could also enable the App to run on iPad (obviously without the MoneyMoney sync) which would be a great addition. I would also appreciate if you could publish this early if/when you get started with it. I would love to contribute.

[Xiphe]

Oh, that's lovely to hear! And really helps a lot with the decision fatigue! Will keep you posted. Thank you!

[leo-benz]

I started experimenting with a SwiftUI based implementation and am enjoying working on it. The Swift language makes loading the data from MoneyMoney through applescripts almost too easy 😄

I would like to share my progress (and collaborate with anyone interested) and am wondering how to best setup and share the repo. From my point of view the changes are too fundamental for them to be a branch of this repo. I could setup my own repo but I wanted to check with you (@Xiphe) first if this would be ok for you or if you would prefer another setup.

[Xiphe]

Wow, that's awesome! Would love to see your progress. I agree that it does not make much sense to share a repository for that and it's totally fine with me if you publish your work on your account. If we end up collaborating a lot on that project we might as well create a github org 🚀 but that's again me thinking 10 steps to far ahead

[leo-benz]

Sounds good. I have setup a new repo and uploaded the first experiment: https://github.com/leo-benz/budgetbudget-native

[diktomat]

Beta user, was? Count me in, when September ends… :)

[w-marco]

Just to chime in, this looks and sounds great!
I am a regular user of the App and still use it daily. A native solution (and for that maybe a collaboration between you two) sounds exactly like what this needed as the next step. Allthough I cannot write Swift I'm more than happy to beta-test once it reached a good-enough state for that.

Anyway, keep up the great work, thank you for everything BudgetBudget already did to this day, and I am happy to see project continuing forward.

[ghabiger]

Thanks for the update and thank you for BudgetBudget. I wish you all the best, especially in your endeavours regarding your mental health.
I've recently personally stopped using BudgetBudget because I've had personal troubles with keeping up my budgeting in general, and my BudgetBudget throws an error on startup that I don't have the time to debug.
So I just wanted to let you know that I've temporarily cancelled the sponsorship, for now, but will still keep an eye on the project, will regularly check back, and would love to get back on board when/if BudgetBudget transitions to being a native App.
I hope there are no hard feelings and wish you only good things in your life.

[Xiphe]

❤️ No hard feelings at all. I'm still flattered that so many people found interest in this project and that some of you even showed their support by sponsoring me. Thank you @ghabiger for getting involved, really means a lot to me regardless if you're still sponsoring or using the app. There are no obligations here!

[skempken]

Hi Hannes, thanks for the update - such personal care for your users is much appreciated! The project in its current state is sufficient for me to replace YNAB, which I’ve used in the past. As long as it runs - and it does! - that’s fine with me. Since I’ve paid for YNAB, it only seems fair to me to spend a few Euros on any replacement, even if there is no new development. I like the idea of having a native app. If you ever get this properly started - don’t feel pressured to do so -, please give me a note. I don’t know much Swift, but I know JavaScript even less :-) Personally, I wish you all the best. Take care of yourself! Best regards, Sebastian

…

Am 14.06.2022 um 15:40 schrieb Hannes Diercks ***@***.***>: Hey Everybody. Since I still use this project myself often, and some of you find it useful enough to sponsor me here on Github (💜 @greyestapps <https://github.com/greyestapps> @ghabiger <https://github.com/ghabiger> @skempken <https://github.com/skempken> @netgitdom <https://github.com/netgitdom>) I feel like I should give an update. TL;DR: I've lost motivation but not interest. Most impactful is that I currently struggle with mental health and therefore have cut down on things that felt like a burden and am doing more stuff that spark joy in the moment. BudgetBudget had felt more like a burden in the past 2 years. That is partly because I tried to completely redo the onboarding when I last worked on the project and kinda failed to met my own expectations which lead to a situation where I was not motivated to continue working on the onboarding but it felt wrong to work on the project and discarding my onboarding stuff. Also I've integrated an early preview of ***@***.*** and it took the react team much longer than expected to stabilise the release (was released ~3 months ago). So I felt blocked by react - It was a bad choice to jump on the pre-release train but it also felt wrong to jump of it now that the project was on it leading to a dead-lock. Last but not least: Earlier this year I realised that Ideally this App would be a native swift app and not electron. It's only electron because I'm most fluent in JavaScript but for the most part I've been reinventing the wheel to make this look and feel like a MacOS app. So I started learning swift, even motivated a dear friend of mine to do this together with me. But until now I don't fell like I know enough of the native programming environment to build an application that is mostly concerned with our financial data. Yeah. So this is where we are. I still use the current state of the app a lot and whenever I open it I feel bad for not continuing work. But I also feel unable to make the decisions required for me to work on this. If you have any input on this please let me know. And thank you for staying with me, the feedback and for being kind humans! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#98>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAGXJC756QNBMX75J72VC5TVPCDVNANCNFSM5YXYHITQ>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[Xiphe]

Thanks @skempken really appreciate what you're saying <3

@leo-benz started on a native version here: https://github.com/leo-benz/budgetbudget-native
I'm looking forward to collaborate there once motivation kicks in :)

I still intend to at least keep the current state running until we have a successor.

[andre68723]

todays sponsored Mac App Store posting reminded me UI wise directly to BudgetBudget,
otherwise it's not related (no MoneyMoney)

[Xiphe]

Cool! Thanks for sharing @andre68723

I think a lot of solutions are inspired by YNAB. But might be worth looking into this one for some details that I'm not happy with in BB.

[mmoole]

just to note: the app Actual now has (again) a desktop variant which also runs on MacOS, so maybe one could get inspired by BudgetBudget or even reuse some code for this. I made a feature request there which is open for voting.