The “Schreinerprogramm” (joinery program) is my long-term software project, and also my first software project. I have started it in 9^th grade before I even knew programming. Since then it underwent several complete recreations, updates and upgrades as my programming skills developed.

Basic idea

The purpose of the “Schreinerprogramm” is to have a program to store and manage the working time of the workers in a joinery for each project in the joinery. So when writing the bill for a project, the total needed working time can just be looked up and does not have to be calculated from hundreds of different sheets of paper.

The idea was initially designed for the joinery of my father but can surely be applied to other joineries and craft businesses as well. The underlying problem is of course that the working hours of the workers are still often tracked by writing them on paper by hand, which results in much effort when calculating the working hours for the project bills.

Evolution

Open Office Calc

So in 9^th grade, we started to learn SQL in computer science class, and that’s when I recognized the potential for storing the working hours data in a database and somehow perform calculations on them. While the idea was basically right, the lack of a graphical interface kind of made this approach not really usable. Nevertheless, I still set up a database structure for storing employees, projects, customers and the according working hours.

Java and Calc

In 10^th grade, I first started learning Java. As I now was able to make a more user-friendly graphical interface, I just reused the calc database and basically made a Java frontend for it. While the connection to the database was really sketchy and the GUI looked far from good, it still worked and was pretty well usable.

JavaFX

In 11^th grade, I dived really deep into Java and also learned my first software patterns and data structures in school. This caused me to completely rework the whole application and start to apply the model view controller pattern I’ve just learned to improve the software structure. Also, as I just learned about linked lists, I banned the database approach and stored all the data in linked lists and then saved the objects. This was the first time a real somewhat product-like piece of software came out. Also, I switched from Java Swing to JavaFX which really boosted the look of the GUI.

Current Stage

As you probably know in the meantime, I’m now studying computer science. In the third semester, we actually really learned how to use JavaFX and of course, I also gained a lot of experience in properly developing software during my first semesters. So in the third semester, I started again to rework everything from scratch.

And basically that’s the state of the project right now. It still uses JavaFX, but now in a way as it should be used, and especially with using all the benefits which come with JavaFX. Also, the data is now stored in CSV files. The reason for this is that they can be easily modified by hand without any additional software while they are also easily parsable. Still, the software now is built to switch to a proper database solution later without any problems. Unfortunately, the software is still under construction and not ready for release as I basically find only time to work on it “when I am bored”.

Open Source

I already used the term “release” in the section above, because actually I plan to make this project public and open-source. My vision is that maybe I can help some other small craft businesses that can not afford expensive AAA products for managing their workers’ working times.

I will keep you updated on this page on the current progress and hope that I can publish a first version as soon as possible.