Nick, is there something specific you don’t understand? The Defusable Clock firmware is commented quite well. I tried to explain what each part is doing. I used clear variable and function names like [tt:28c3yg0s]ringAlarm()[/tt:28c3yg0s] and [tt:28c3yg0s]snooze()[/tt:28c3yg0s] and [tt:28c3yg0s]countdown()[/tt:28c3yg0s] to make it clear.
There’s really no shortcut to programming — you just need to work to learn it. People shouldn’t expect to be able to do embedded electronics programming without knowing how to actually program. Arduino is a very easy entry point to programming in general, and there are many Arduino tutorials and books out there.
I can answer any specific questions you might have.