I hadn’t actually thought about this. I wrote a response, slept on it, decided I didn’t like it.

The specific answer to the question is “programmer’s task organiser”, but the broader and more relevant question is “what makes your program better than the ones that are already out there?”

To some extent, that’s something I want to find out as I go. At this stage, I’m purely after attention. If someone says “hey, that’s great, but could you add this?” then I’ve started moving towards an actual market desire. Right now I’m guided by what I want the software to do, and presumably there’s some overlap with what other people want.

Down the track there’ll be programmer-oriented features such as estimation tools, source control integration and reporting. You wouldn’t see these in a more general hierarchical todo list. In my experience, most people don’t deal with the same volume of tasks that need to be tracked. This is another reason why I’m concentrating on the programmer market: we *do* have a lot to track, and it needs to be tracked accurately. A tree is not too complicated a data structure to store all of this information in.

My particular organiser is designed with high performance in mind and cross-platform compatibility, but neither of those are particularly unique, nor do they solve any new problems. I’m writing this with the intent that it will be used for small-scale planning (each task might last minutes or hours), and typically with a single user. It’s a supplement for bug tracking and roadmap tools, not a substitute.