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Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

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Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#1

Post by vtanase »

Hello, I have been lurking HN for some time now, and have finally found an opportunity to make a contribution. A friend of mine is going to be starting her first programming job in the middle of July and she lacks confidence in her skills, so I decided to work together with her until then and create a production ready project together. Since the good folks on this site always seem to need something built, I figured it was best to ask here and see if we could make someones day a little bit better. :)

Some info about our skills:

-me: worked for about 2 years in Java web application development, so I am familiar with things like Spring, Hibernate, templating engines, JUnit, Apache CXF, Apache web server and Apache Tomcat, CSS, Html, JavaScript and databases(particularly MySQL).

-her: she is going to start her first full time job as a developer in 2 weeks, these are some of the things she knows: core Java, HTML, CSS, EJB 3, JPA and JPQL (I believe she has some EclipseLink experience), Glassfish and Tomcat and some knowledge of databases

Given our 2 skill sets, I believe we could handle best building a web application or a web service, though we are open to other things if they are within our power to build.

Hope we can be of assistance to some of you.

tl;dr: we are 2 java developers looking to donate about 2 weeks of our time to building something that you need free of charge.

Regards, Vlad

P.S.: if there are project details that you are not comfortable discussing in the comments, to get my e-mail you just add .ro to the end of my HN username and add at gmail.com.

Re: Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#2

Post by ecubed »

Build something that not just an individual needs, but that the entire community needs. And bonus points for open sourcing it. Rather than asking what HN needs, instead think of what YOU need. I'm currently working on a project that I think other people would benefit from, but worst case scenario if I'm the only user, it's going to make my life a hell of a lot easier. Try and do the same. Obviously theres something you encounter in everyday life that you think sucks and could be fixed through a java app. Do that, open source it, and everyone wins.

Re: Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#3

Post by taligent »

How about building an open source activity stream app ?

http://500.co/2011/02/08/build-a-killer-product-faster-the-s...

Use Twitter Bootstrap for the UI and just have a simple generic REST service you can push activity events to. This would also allow you to get some exposure into WebSockets. Maybe even try and do it in Play, Grails, Vert.x etc for something different.

You could even turn it into a little startup.

Re: Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#4

Post by vtanase »

ecubed wrote: post #2

Build something that not just an individual needs, but that the entire community needs. And bonus points for open sourcing it. Rather than asking what HN needs, instead think of what YOU need. I'm currently working on a project that I think other people would benefit from, but worst case scenario if I'm the only user, it's going to make my life a hell of a lot easier. Try and do the same. Obviously theres something y…

While I do agree with what you said as a general statement, I have found quite a few sticking points in applying this to web applications.

Firstly, I for one have seen very little interest in the open source-ing of web application code. I might be wrong, but as far as I know there are only a few bigger websites that put out their code (such as reddit if I'm not mistaking).

Secondly, to fix a problem with the skills we are trying to use(web development mostly) you need to host it, launch it and then maintain and manage the site. While getting what we build up and running would not be too big a problem, neither of us would have the time to invest in maintaining and managing the site. Therefore, we thought that it would be more beneficial to help someone with their backlog.

So, to sum it up, we thought of this more along the lines of: "hey, you know that thing that you have been thinking of building, but have been putting it off for months? pitch it to us and we'll make it for you".

Re: Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#6

Post by vtanase »

taligent wrote: post #3

How about building an open source activity stream app ? http://500.co/2011/02/08/build-a-killer-product-faster-the-s... Use Twitter Bootstrap for the UI and just have a simple generic REST service you can push activity events to. This would also allow you to get some exposure into WebSockets. Maybe even try and do it in Play, Grails, Vert.x etc for something different. You could even turn it into a little startup.

This actually sounds pretty interesting and I would really like to fiddle with this idea. The thing is right now it actually feels like biting off a bit more than we can chew. I might just come back to this idea somewhere in the future, since I find it really intriguing.

Re: Ask HN: Anything that you want built from 2 Java programmers free of charge?

#8

Post by derpmeister »

vtanase wrote: post #7
jfaucett wrote: post #5

I'd love to have a simple newsletter tool, with a backend administration interface that clients could use (WYSIWYG editor, etc).

This sounds doable, shoot me an e-mail and we can see how simple is simple for you. :)

Parent is asking for a spam program, don't fall for it. Sending bulk email isn't trivial at all and there are already good solutions for it such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor.
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