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Java Developer Says He Built, Launched Basic Open Source Office Suite In 30 Days
alphadogg writes "A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office suite that runs on multiple OSes. Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said. The office suite was built with NetBeans and uses many popular open source Java libraries. That allowed him to built the program in 30 days, he said, a process that he documented daily on YouTube (video). The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet. Goubard's Amsterdam company, Japplis, launched the suite, which is available under an Apache 2.0 license. This license allows companies to change and redistribute the code internally without having to share the new code publicly, he said."
This sort of response reeks of retardation (the slow kind). Have you any idea the amount of wasted effort that would be generated if we all tried to create the crappiest office suite in the world, each our selves? I MIGHT have been behind the idea if it were to have been collaborative. There's a reason why we don't all rush out to re-invent the wheel: It's just retarding progress. Hell, Java has all the components, like a rich text editing widget + inline images, 2D Animations, spreadsheet, and more, right in their damn tutorial. We could all just drag and drop the Java Tutorial Examples into a project and be done in less than a day. That's the point.
That said, Game-Jams are WAY better way to go out solo and create something in 30 days. Since games don't have to all be the same set of functionality (like an office suite would be) individual efforts are actually much beneficial to the world (less wheel re-inventing). "Game a Month" challenges have been going on for a while now. There are even challenges / game making competitions with specific themes or time limits (7 day FPS, 7 day Roguelike, 48 hour Lundum Dare). For a nice overview of the current and upcoming challenges I use CompoHub. Furthermore, since every game is different it's much less of a chore and far more fun to slog through every completed project than essentially test the same exact boring feature-set over and over and over and over game over again.... Bonus Point: Many of the games produced are cross platform, some are free, some are even open source / GPL'd!
In short: Your call to put up or shut up was uncalled for. You don't have to look very far to see folks doing much more with far less. A whole damn video game in 7 days, or 24 hours vs and Office Suite? We don't have to prove making something better than this in less than 30 days is possible, we already know it is.