Building a D&D productivity tracker with generative music

How front-end customization brings more creativity and joy to the web.

The first real bug you solve delivers dopamine that makes you want to climb the next mountain. In this episode, Bree Hall, Senior Developer Advocate at Atlassian, joins the We Love Open Source podcast to share why front-end customization makes the internet a cuter place, what happens when you ask “what if productivity tracking could use all five senses,” and why being the big sister she wished she had drives her mission for equity in tech.

Bree’s passion for front-end development boils down to customization. She loves making things match her brand or personality, bringing creativity to anyone who can access the web. Her hook moment came from a simple color game tutorial where you get a hex code and click the box representing that color. When her code wouldn’t work and she almost gave up, she discovered her CSS was wrong. Solving that first real bug delivered the dopamine rush that keeps developers climbing mountains, knowing more bugs are coming but craving that feeling again.

Making tech equitable means being the big sister or cousin Bree wished she had when starting. She didn’t see anyone she could relate to with similar backgrounds. People in the industry seemed on a different pedestal of smart. She felt she needed a computer science degree or had to get things on the first try like teammates did. Then she realized everyone learns differently and secondary education isn’t accessible to everyone. Those things don’t define whether you’ll be a good engineer. Her message: It won’t always be sunshine and roses, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get there.

Read more: The AI slop problem threatening open source maintainers

Bree’s cute code projects explore wild questions. What if productivity tracking could use all five senses when coding? Since smell vision doesn’t exist and people probably don’t want to lick their computers, she built a Dungeons and Dragons style productivity tracker with d20, d4, and d6 dice. Roll to pick what task to work on and how long. It plays generative music too, either dungeony synth for dungeon themes or light airy fairy music.

Her career advice: Stay flexible. Have a destination but allow other things to happen on the journey. In open source you never know who you’ll meet, what projects you’ll work on, or their impact. Being rigid cuts off opportunities to meet great people and work on great tools.

Key takeaways

• Solving your first real bug creates the dopamine that keeps you going: The feeling of fixing a problem after almost giving up makes you want to climb the next mountain, knowing more bugs are coming.
• Equity means being the mentor you wish you had: Not everyone sees people they can relate to in tech. Secondary education isn’t accessible to all and doesn’t define engineering ability.
• Stay flexible in open source to capture unexpected opportunities: Knowing your destination but staying open reveals people, projects, and impact you couldn’t predict. Rigidity cuts off possibilities.

Bree’s message: Make tech accessible and fun by customizing the web, solving bugs, building cute projects, and being the big sister who tells newcomers they belong regardless of background.

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