I’ve been playing with computers and writing code since 1981, so have seen a few things change, and the past couple of years have been alarming from a world new stage, but that’s not so much about tech as global unrest.

It started with the cookie banners… “We value your privacy” == “Of course, it’s worth money to us” The internet has shifted a lot over the past couple of years particularly, and it was inevitable. Just as inevitable is the loss of the small internet (I speak as someone who runs several small websites that get scraped and stolen from constantly), and the attempts of governments to control it. That was all going to happen, and just as inevitable is the impossibility of complete control - it’ll just make life harder for the honest person.

We’ve seen some shitty changes to software too through global business. With hindsight, that was inevitable too - it took a long time for someone to realise just how locked in the likes of vmware’s customers were. How cloud and then AI additions were reasons to charge more for features we don’t like. There’s a lot of fear about global instability for obvious reasons, and that’s hard to shake.

But also… People haven’t changed. For every big name enshittification, there’s people sprouting two more things without such controls. Where we are now - founded largely because of shenanighans at Reddit. You mention Linux - again, most of it free and accessible and those are baked into it. (We’ll skip over Redhat here, I think, perhaps the exception that proves the rule). There’s a lot of free software projects that are born out of love for the free and open community. A place where respect is more common than rudeness.

So I’m certain there’s a balance. Yes, crappy things. But also good things. I’m constantly amazed at new inventions and how tech is genuinely improving life for many people. I grew up in England in the 70s and the quality of life today is better despite what we might think, but it’s also far more complicated, and makes us feel helpless and small. Back then, our world was small, we knew people. A disaster on the other side of the world took days to arrive on our newspapers, and we weren’t made to feel like we should do something about it.

Perception may be playing a big part in your view here, and you sound both burnt out and depressed. Not uncommon with the bombardment of badness in the news that we can do nothing about. Understanding that, and stepping outside of the doom cycle, definitely helps.

Ultimately, you’ve got to do what’s right for you. If tech is a hobby to you, then it’s the same as any other hobby. When it stops being fun, it’s time to find something else that you enjoy instead of, or as well as. Hope you find a better balance.

It doesn’t need the Dockerfile to run.

Thanks for the feedback, always interesting to hear how people might use a tool like this.

I do have email notifications in the roadmap, but to be honest, I’ve struggled to visualise how that might work for two reasons:

1. One of Taskpony’s goals is that it’s as easy to install and run as it could be. Configuring email settings takes a lot of detail (especially when running in docker where you can’t rely on a local smtp). I’ve thought about other tools like ntfy.sh, which I love, but the whole ecosystem of dozens of systems and tools for DM style notifications is too wide to support.

2. I wouldn’t use it like that, I’d use a calendar for distant events, and there’s no plans to support “Task must be done by” style timers, as again, I think the interface would get too complex. I keep Taskpony in a tabbed browser, and also as one of my daily bookmark folders, so it shows up regularly enough to show me.

Out of interest, how would you use notifications, or see how they’d work? Are you thinking of browser notifications? And if so, on what logic might they trigger?

Great that you’re using it!

And yes - sadly koyeb’s demo went down as I posted this link. I’ve quickly thrown up another demo here; https://taskpony.onrender.com/

Indeed, but I love writing in Perl and it still works great. It’s a shame it’s not more widely used.