
Java developer says he built, launched basic open source office suite in 30 days - Garbage
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/052313-java-developer-says-he-built-270087.html?
======
sharms
I think that a lot of us on HN would not even try to write a word processor,
as we know how difficult it is, and that the barrier to entry is high.

This shows that it is possible to make a minimum viable product with one
person with persistence and skill. Thank you for sharing!

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abbyroad9191
Yeah cheers to that guy who built the office suite. Why is there so much
negative feedback towards said hacker?

~~~
yareally
I couldn't agree more. While it may not be a "show hn" project, the developer
may still be a member of the hn community. If one is going to criticise the
project, they should at least do so constructively so they can improve it. I
don't think any of us would really want snarky remarks as the feedback to
something we poured our free time in and shared with the community to garner
feedback.

Treat other developers in the same way we would want to be treated if in a
similar position :)

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tzury
The problem is that some people are trying to re-create "The Office".

Want to build the perfect tool, the better alternative? That's great, but why
don't you start with a single product, say, a word processor, or a
spreadsheet?

Start small, iterate, get feedback, and so on, and then expand.

If you were able to beat MS Office in a single product, you must be doing
something right, and chances are you will get far more resources (developers,
testers, etc.) to build other products.

~~~
tixocloud
I second that. The offering looks like a mish mash and I cannot even imagine
how usable it is. I don't know how an alpha version qualifies as recreated MS
Office in 30 days.

What they should have done was to start with a single product like you said
work on the essential features, get feedback and cruft out all the additional
advanced functionality that the MS Office version has so you'd have a cleaner,
leaner offering.

Although sometimes, at the end of the day, the issue isn't so much the
software being the perfect tool but how compatible is the tool with existing
processes. We use MS Office on the business side and OpenOffice on the
engineering side - so much pain when sending documents across the two
divisions with documents not looking the same.

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kiiski
The article says that it's not ever supposed to compete with MS Office, but to
be a basic solution for companies with specific needs ("such as obtaining data
from a Java library").

~~~
tylerlh
The article does say, however, that the product is eventually meant to compete
with Google Docs..

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sgt
As much as I admire this guy's effort - and his intentions. This is a tool of
the past. And he based it on NetBeans?

You know, I spend 8 hours every day developing in NetBeans. It's OK to work
in, and you can create cool applications with it, mostly Java EE apps in my
case. But basing something on top of such a heavy and bug ridden platform is
not a viable long term approach.

And why call it "The Open Source Java Office Suite"? Users do not care whether
it's Java or C# or what not, as long as it's better than current offerings out
there.

I could go on. Sorry - I'm not excited by this, but perhaps someone else is?

~~~
yareally
> And why call it "The Open Source Java Office Suite"? Users do not care
> whether it's Java or C# or what not, as long as it's better than current
> offerings out there.

It seems to be a trend with developers sometimes to get so involved in what
they make that they forget who their target audience is (I would guess in this
case he wants more than developers to use it). If his only fault in target
audience usability is the naming, then he's doing pretty well (don't know if
it is or not yet and usability is subjective). Either way, still a great
learning experience taking on a project like this and I don't think I would
judge it past "proof of concept" so far.

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voidlogic
> "The office suite was built with NetBeans"

The code was written in Netbeans? The code uses the Netbeans platform (which
rocks). Or both?

~~~
moondowner
As I can see in the screenshots and videos, it's built on top of NetBeans RCP,
which is cool :)

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brokenparser
Not really, it´s based on Swing. Fonts are going to look horrible.

~~~
watt
It appears swing fonts actually are fixable, see for example this approach
using patched JDK (on Linux). (Fixing issue for Idea on Linux, but actually
fixes it for all Swing apps - <http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-57233>
)

~~~
brokenparser
Thank you! There's also a fix for Arch, no idea if it's the same patch,
though. [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/jre7-openjdk-headless-
fon...](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/jre7-openjdk-headless-fontfix/)

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haddr
This is about how productive you can be by using mature technology with plenty
of libraries and components. How long would it take with Go or ruby with their
still small ecosystems?

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sigzero
"BASIC" is probably the key word in that title.

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EGreg
I have been writing a framework that supports building what I consider to be
the Minimum Viable Product of any _successful_ social app. (One that will go
on to success in this new environment of 2013, mobile phones etc.) We took
care of everything, from user signup, to realtime updates and offline
notifications, to access controls, roles, contacts, invitations, and even
auto-scaling in case you get to millions of users. And it took me two years
and help from two additional developers.

I guess that's a huge amount of effort for the number of people, but overall
it's something that a large company like Google or Facebook already built in-
house.

Just goes to show some problems require more than others to solve. And also,
by leveraging existing libraries, you can more quickly build an MVP that may
not scale but can show off the capabilities.

~~~
reubensutton
If your MVP requires you spending 6 man years building a framework, that's not
an MVP.

An MVP doesn't need autoscaling, or most of the rest of the stuff you mention.

I always remember 37signals launching an app without writing a billing system,
because they didn't need it until the end of the first trial period.

~~~
EGreg
That's different. Our "product" is a framework that repeatably lets apps
become viral and get millions of users, through mobile phone invitations
instead of facebook. Bsaically it turns your mobile phone into a social
platform, with the address book playing the role of the friend list.

<https://medium.com/musings-about-text-boxes/8157c364d26a>

Compare: [http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-
platfor...](http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platform/) :)

I guess it comes down to what you understand "viable" to mean. Because if:

1\. our app couldn't work on all mobile platforms => you wouldn't be able to
invite many of your contacts, losing a lot of virality that could make the
difference (<http://luckyapps.com/blog/?p=12>)

2\. we didn't produce native apps, e.g. with phonegap => lack of integration
with addressbook would reduce virality and convenience for the user

3\. our app didn't have a one-step invite process => people would get tired of
jumping through hoops and virality would suffer

4\. our app didn't have realtime updates in chat => people would have to keep
refreshing the page on their mobile phone and not get rewarded for engaging
with the app

5\. our app didn't have offline notifications => engagement would suffer, as
the app wouldn't be able to notify people of relevant things via transactional
notifications

6\. we didn't have ways to manage notifications => people might get annoyed
they are getting too many notifications ... yes, this one we could have done
later

7\. we didn't have ways to manage privacy / access => then everything would
have to be public, making many people concerned ... yes, this one we could
have done later

8\. didn't have auto scaling where we split shards that get too hot and bring
up more machines => if all the virality and engagement was as high as we
expect, then our machines would quickly crash and we would lose ALL our
momentum.

So we decided to invest in 1-8 up front before launching. We have an unusual
strategy, having built a distributed platform with all the features of a
social network that puts the power into your hands, and works with realtime
and mobile ... and having a completely distributed team that is based
throughout Russia and Ukraine. We are now in a position to launch many viral
apps very efficiently and manage all their common issues on one platform.

PS: We didn't just sit on our hands while building this framework. We already
released two apps that have 250,000 monthly active users, so that is why we
were worried about growing exponentially from there, once we made them
"social".

PPS: Wow, this was a long post. I hope it was informative.

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bliker
I would be more grateful for one good word processor than another half baked
fork of MS office.

~~~
kunai
If you're on Linux, AbiWord is excellent.

If you're on OS X, Apple Pages is excellent.

~~~
bliker
I am looking for something smart. That will have a distraction free editing,
markdown support, pagination and all the good stuff. Some small git
integration. So my girlfriend can do version control on her works. I really
miss that.

~~~
epochwolf
Sounds like you know what you want, any reason you can't start working on it?

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bliker
I just did git init about 5 minutes ago. With me luck!

~~~
kunai
Nice!

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dschiptsov
Intentionally or not, the nickname of the submitter is very telling.)

